Liquid Compute
| Liquid Compute | |
| Key People | Ronit Jain, CEO and Co-Founder; Aarav Patel, Co-Founder; Cam Collins, Chief Commercial Officer; Kevin Aberg, Chief Compliance; Alexander Macturk, Chief of Staff |
|---|---|
| Employees | 2-10 |
| Products | AI compute derivatives and exchange infrastructure |
| Website | liquidcompute.com |
Liquid Compute was originally founded by Ronit Jain and Aarav Patel under the name Pluto and later rebranded. The company is backed by Y Combinator, the startup accelerator. As part of its plan to operate a regulated exchange and clearinghouse for AI infrastructure, the company filed for registration with the CFTC as a designated contract market and a derivatives clearing organization, to operate as PMEX Markets and PMEX Clearing, respectively. Both registrations were pending as of the most recent available information.[1]
Liquid Compute emerged from stealth on September 15, 2026 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 investor Dmitry Balyasny.[2]
The proposed structure is a physical market for compute capacity underlying potential cash-settled contracts tied to prices formed in that market. The company said it intends to build matching, clearing, pricing, and market-data systems for participants that buy, sell, finance, or seek to hedge exposure to computing capacity.[3]
The company has also signed trading and data licensing partnerships with Susquehanna Predictions, BGC Group, and Wintermute.
History[edit]
The founders met as engineering students at UC Berkeley and came to believe that computing power should be organized more like a power grid than a conventional commodity market.[4] The enterprise secured financial and operational support as a participant in the Y Combinator startup accelerator program.[5]
Liquid Compute initiated regulatory filings with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to become the first CFTC-regulated exchange dedicated to AI compute. The firm submitted registrations for a designated contract market (DCM) and a derivatives clearing organization (DCO) under the entities PMEX Markets and PMEX Clearing to ensure regulatory compliance and centralized settlement.[6]
The proposed venue entered a market-structure environment shaped by growing demand for AI computing resources, including GPUs, and by price volatility in computing hardware and capacity. Y Combinator’s company profile stated that GPU and memory prices could move 20% to 40% over periods of months and characterized the absence of standardized forward markets, benchmarks, and hedging instruments as an exposure for AI companies, chipmakers, and infrastructure providers. The profile said Liquid Compute planned standardized GPU contracts covering products including Nvidia H100, A100, and B200 systems, subject to regulatory approval. The company’s regulatory applications had not been approved as of its September 2026 launch announcement.[7]
Products and Services[edit]
Liquid Compute publishes transparent reference prices for GPU compute, covering the B100, B200, H100 and H200 chip classes. These reference prices are intended to serve as the benchmark against which the market settles, supporting price discovery for AI compute as a traded resource.[8]
The company also offers physical delivery of traded compute. Its settlement layer converts a contract into running GPUs, allowing market participants to take delivery of the compute they traded. Further contract specifications have not been publicly documented. Data not available.[9]
Key People[edit]
- Ronit Jain, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder
- Aarav Patel, Co-Founder
- Cam Collins, Chief Commercial Officer
- Kevin Aberg, Chief Compliance
- Alexander Macturk, Chief of Staff
References[edit]
- ↑ Liquid Compute Company Profile. Y Combinator.
- ↑ Liquid Compute Launches with $15M to Build a Regulated Exchange for AI Infrastructure. Liquid Compute via Businesswire.
- ↑ Liquid Compute Launches with $15M to Build a Regulated Exchange for AI Infrastructure. Business Wire.
- ↑ Liquid Compute Launches with $15M to Build a Regulated Exchange for AI Infrastructure. Liquid Compute via Businesswire.
- ↑ Company History. Liquid Compute.
- ↑ Regulatory Filings. Liquid Compute.
- ↑ Liquid Compute: Pending CFTC regulation to be the first cash and physically settled…. Y Combinator.
- ↑ Liquid Compute - Company Overview. LinkedIn.
- ↑ Physical Delivery - Liquid Compute. Liquid Compute.