Liquid Compute Launches with $15M to Build a Regulated Exchange for AI Infrastructure

FirstMark & Chemistry co-led the round, the New York-based company has applications pending before the CFTC for Designated Contract Market and Derivatives Clearing Organization status

Liquid Compute, a marketplace company building regulated venues for trading AI infrastructure, today emerged from stealth with $15 million in seed funding co-led by FirstMark and Chemistry, with participation from K8 Capital, Night Capital, TrueBridge, Brainchild Holdings, UFO Holdings, and angel Dmitry Balyasny.

Founded by Ronit Jain and Aarav Patel, Liquid Compute (formerly Pluto) is a Y Combinator (W24) company. The founders met as engineering students at UC Berkeley and came to believe that compute should be organized more like a power grid than a conventional commodity market like oil. Capacity is heterogeneous, location-dependent, and perishable, making the central challenge one of matching supply and demand across time, geography, and infrastructure. Liquid Compute is building a market layer that connects this fragmented physical capacity into a more transparent and standardized compute grid.

That physical grid is intended to support a financial layer above it. Liquid Compute’s pending applications from the CFTC would allow the company to develop regulated cash-settled markets tied to prices formed across the underlying compute market, giving buyers, suppliers, and financial participants a way to price and manage exposure to compute at scale.

“Our goal is to be the regulated financial infrastructure for a new asset class, similar to what NYMEX was to oil, CBOE was to volatility, and Kalshi was to event contracts,” said Ronit Jain, CEO of Liquid Compute. “Access to compute increasingly determines access to intelligence. We are creating the essential marketplace through which both natural users and financial participants can access, price, and manage that resource.”

“Compute is rapidly becoming strategic infrastructure for the United States,” said Adam Nelson, Partner at FirstMark. “That creates a need for market infrastructure that gives industry and government a transparent view into how capacity is priced, allocated, and financed. Liquid Compute is building a regulated physical and financial layer for the American compute economy.”

The company believes this architecture will become increasingly important as compute moves from a commercial input to a matter of national economic and strategic importance. Just as governments helped establish the regulatory and market frameworks around electricity and other critical infrastructure, Liquid Compute expects compute markets to require clear standards, transparent pricing, and regulated venues through which capacity can be allocated and risk can be managed.

“Most people building in this space are treating compute as a fungible commodity like oil, and most of the infrastructure being built reflects that,” said Mark Goldberg, Managing Partner at Chemistry. “Liquid Compute started from a different premise. They are building the physical market first, then the regulated financial layer on top of it, closer to how power markets actually work.”

Liquid Compute has also signed trading and data licensing partnerships with Susquehanna Predictions, BGC Group, and Wintermute.

“BGC is excited to have signed a data partnership with Liquid Compute to support our build out of the OTC market for Compute and congratulate Ronit and team for their successful capital raise,” said Arran Rowsell, Head of Strategy at BGC Group.

The company will use the new funding to accelerate the buildout of its core matching and clearing infrastructure and expand the amount of compute available across its grid. On top of the physical orderbook, Liquid Compute is developing transparent pricing and market data that gives buyers, sellers, traders, and lenders a clearer view of how the industry prices capacity, underwrites infrastructure, manages risk, and allocates capital. Liquid Compute is also hiring for compliance and market operations to support its pending CFTC applications.

To learn more about our mission or inquire about partnerships, please visit liquidcompute.com.

About Liquid Compute

Liquid Compute is a New York-based company building the first physical grid for compute underneath a pending CFTC-regulated cash-settled futures exchange. By providing a marketplace for users to transact in the short term and monetize unutilized capacity, Liquid Compute is underpinning the foundation for the utility of American compute.

This release contains forward-looking statements regarding the company's regulatory applications and planned operations. Regulatory outcomes are not guaranteed. Nothing in this release constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or commodity interest, and no statement herein constitutes an endorsement or approval by the CFTC or any other regulator.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260915989921/en/

“Access to compute increasingly determines access to intelligence. We are creating the essential marketplace through which both natural users and financial participants can access, price, and manage that resource.”