The expansion of infrastructure for artificial intelligence shows no signs of slowing. With hundreds of billions of dollars annually directed towards data centres and graphics processing units (GPUs), computing has become the largest cost for any company developing AI products. Yet despite this spending, there is no direct method for pricing computing capacity or for companies to hedge their exposure when prices fluctuate.
Silicon Data has just closed a $30 million Series A funding round to solve this problem. The startup aims to become the price reference for GPU rental and the index on which a Wall Street futures contract would be settled. The company plans to launch computing futures trading on the CME on October 5th, pending regulatory approval.
In an episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan talks with Steve Hou, head of research at Silicon Data, to discuss the health of the AI infrastructure expansion and why the data tells a different story than negative headlines about chip depreciation and stalled data centres.
