Shanghai Futures Exchange, CME Group, and Intercontinental Exchange are building derivatives markets for AI tokens and GPU rentals

Shanghai Futures Exchange is currently designing a derivatives market for AI tokens, while CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange (owner of the NYSE) are separately working on launching futures contracts for renting GPUs, according to Reuters.

GPU rental prices vary by model and marketplace: Nvidia H100 GPUs range from $1.40 to $4.27 per hour across 13 marketplaces, while H200 GPUs average between $2.34 and $5 per hour across 10 marketplaces, per data from AI Mining Co. tracking 28 marketplaces and cloud providers.

Unlike mature spot markets for GPUs, infrastructure around AI tokens (the fundamental building blocks of AI models) remains less developed. Major AI companies price enterprise plans in tokens—for example, OpenAI charges $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output tokens for GPT-5.5 API access.

By tying derivatives to how AI companies price tokens, the Shanghai exchange's product would allow businesses, investors, and data center operators to hedge against compute costs.