Liquid Compute emerged from stealth with a $15 million seed round, unveiling plans to build the first CFTC-regulated orderbook for trading compute.

The startup has pending applications before the CFTC for Designated Contract Market (DCM) and Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) status, aiming to run a regulated venue for both cash and physically settled compute contracts. Its thesis is that compute behaves like electricity rather than oil, heterogeneous and impossible to store, so it is building a short-term spot market to underpin a cash-settled derivatives layer, modeled on power grids like PJM and ERCOT. It has already worked with Susquehanna International Group, BGC Group and Wintermute to seed OTC trading for AI startups, neocloud providers and lenders.

The round was co-led by Chemistry and FirstMark Capital, with participation from K8, Night Capital, UFO Holdings, TrueBridge, Brainchild Holdings and Y Combinator, plus angels including Dmitry Balyasny and operators from CoreWeave, Jane Street and OpenAI.

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