Liquid Compute has raised $15 million to develop a regulated marketplace for trading AI compute capacity.

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,” said CEO and co-founder Ronit Jain. “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.”

Jain noted that compute is heterogeneous and cannot be stored, functioning more like electricity 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,” he said.

In recent months, Liquid Compute has collaborated 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, the company will deploy the new capital to accelerate development of its core matching and clearing infrastructure and expand the volume of compute available across its grid.

Beyond the physical order book, Liquid Compute is developing transparent pricing and market data to provide buyers, sellers, traders, and lenders with a clearer view of how the industry prices capacity, underwrites infrastructure, manages risk, and allocates capital. To support its pending CFTC applications, the company is also expanding its team with hires in compliance and market operations.

Liquid Compute was founded by Ronit Jain and Aarav Patel. Formerly known as Pluto, the company is a Y Combinator W24 cohort member. The founders, who met as engineering students at UC Berkeley, concluded that compute should be structured more like a power grid than a conventional commodity market such as oil.

“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.”

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