The Future of Trading: AI Token Futures on the Horizon

The Future of Trading: AI Token Futures on the Horizon">

The next big thing in trading might not be a commodity or a stock, but a fundamental unit of artificial intelligence: the token. China's Shanghai Futures Exchange is working on designing a derivatives market for AI tokens, according to Reuters. This development comes as major derivatives exchange CME Group and the Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, are separately exploring the launch of futures contracts for renting graphics processing units (GPUs).

The GPU market is still evolving, but with a wide range of companies using, selling, and renting GPUs, a robust spot market for GPU rentals has emerged. Data from AI Mining Co. shows that median prices for Nvidia H100 GPUs ranged from $1.40 to $4.27 per hour across 13 marketplaces, while the average price for H200 GPUs was between $2.34 and $5 per hour across 10 marketplaces.

Over the past week, average H100 prices fluctuated between $2.79 and $3.33. While the GPU market is maturing, the infrastructure for trading tokens themselves, the building blocks of modern AI models, is still underdeveloped. Many AI companies, including OpenAI, denominate their enterprise plans in tokens, charging $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output tokens for its latest GPT-5.5 model API.

Cloud providers like Amazon are also starting to offer per-token pricing, as seen in its Bedrock system. The push for AI token futures comes amid a massive buildout of AI infrastructure. Cloud service providers, private equity firms, and infrastructure players have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in data centers, anticipating rising demand for GPUs and compute.

A new generation of global neocloud companies is emerging to capitalize on this demand, with some focusing on inference and others competing with cloud giants like Oracle, AWS, and Google Cloud. By targeting AI tokens, the Shanghai exchange's derivative product would be tied to how AI companies price their services, providing businesses, investors, and data center operators with a way to hedge against the cost of compute. This development could mark a significant milestone in the evolution of AI trading, making it possible to manage risk and speculate on the future value of AI tokens.