Liquid Compute launches with $15M in funding to build regulated marketplace and exchange for trading AI infrastructure capacity.

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

The company was founded by Ronit Jain and Aarav Patel, who met as engineering students at UC Berkeley. A Y Combinator Winter 2024 cohort company, Liquid Compute operates on the premise that compute should be organized more like a power grid than a conventional commodity market such as oil. The heterogeneous, location-dependent, and perishable nature of capacity makes the core challenge one of matching supply and demand across time, geography, and infrastructure. Liquid Compute is building a market layer that connects fragmented physical capacity into a more transparent and standardized compute grid.

Above this physical layer sits a financial infrastructure component. Liquid Compute has pending applications with the CFTC that would enable it 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 Jain. "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."

Adam Nelson, partner at FirstMark, said: "Compute is rapidly becoming strategic infrastructure for the United States. 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 expects compute markets to evolve as the resource moves from a commercial input to a matter of national economic and strategic importance. Just as governments helped establish regulatory and market frameworks around electricity and other critical infrastructure, Liquid Compute anticipates that compute will require clear standards, transparent pricing, and regulated venues through which capacity can be allocated and risk managed.

Mark Goldberg, managing partner at Chemistry, said: "Most people building in this space are treating compute as a fungible commodity like oil, and most of the infrastructure being built reflects that. 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 signed trading and data licensing partnerships with Susquehanna Predictions, BGC Group, and Wintermute. Arran Rowsell, head of strategy at BGC Group, said the firm 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."

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