Liquid Compute, a startup building regulated venues for trading AI infrastructure, has emerged from stealth with $15 million in seed funding.
The round was co-led by FirstMark and Chemistry, with participation from K8 Capital, Night Capital, TrueBridge, Brainchild Holdings, UFO Holdings and angel investor Dmitry Balyasny.
“I’m excited to share that today Liquid Compute emerged from stealth with a $15 million seed round. We are announcing pending applications before the CFTC for Designated Contract Market (DCM) and Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) status to build the first regulated order book to trade both cash- and physically settled contracts on compute,” said CEO and co-founder Ronit Jain.
“The reality of compute is that it is heterogeneous and cannot be stored, functioning much like electricity rather than oil. Our approach focuses on developing a highly efficient short-term market to underpin a cash-settled derivatives layer, operating similarly to PJM or ERCOT sitting below liquid derivatives markets,” Jain said.
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Jain also said that Liquid Compute has collaborated in recent months with financial firms including Susquehanna International Group, BGC Group and Wintermute to facilitate liquid over-the-counter trading for AI startups, neocloud providers and lenders.
According to Business Wire, Liquid Compute will use the new funding to accelerate the development of its core matching and clearing infrastructure and expand the amount of compute available across its grid.
In addition to the physical order book, Liquid Compute is developing transparent pricing and market data designed to give buyers, sellers, traders and lenders a clearer view of how the industry prices capacity, underwrites infrastructure, manages risk and allocates capital.
The company is also hiring for compliance and market operations roles to support its pending CFTC applications.
Liquid Compute was founded by Ronit Jain and Aarav Patel. Formerly known as Pluto, the company is a Y Combinator W24 company. The founders reportedly met as engineering students at UC Berkeley and later came to believe that compute should be organized more like a power grid than a conventional commodity market such as oil.
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“Compute is rapidly becoming strategic infrastructure for the United States,” said Adam Nelson, a 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.”
“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.”