September 17, 2025
History has shown that when an essential resource emerges, markets must evolve to support it. Grain, oil, and financial derivatives each had their own transformative moment, moving from fragmented, opaque transactions to standardized, transparent, globally traded commodities. Those markets did more than deliver efficiency, they fueled entire eras of economic expansion, feeding billions, powering global industry, and stabilizing financial markets.
Today, we stand at the precipice of a similar transformation, but this time the essential resource is computing power. AI is fueling a new industrial revolution, yet the financial infrastructure required to sustain this growth remains dangerously incomplete. Until a standard unit of account and centralized marketplace emerges, boards and finance teams will fly blind without proper controls. What was once a line-item expense has now become a strategic financial asset central to enterprise performance and competitive advantage. But in the absence of transparency and governance, it remains volatile and opaque. That’s why InfraSight created the Workload Compute Unit (WCU), and why InfraX is the natural extension of that foundation.
The parallels are clear. When grain markets in Chicago first standardized contracts in the mid-19th century, they gave farmers, traders, and financiers a way to understand true value, hedge risk, and scale global supply. When oil futures emerged in the 20th century, they enabled producers, refiners, and consumers to manage volatility and secure energy for a growing world. Financial derivatives in the late 20th and early 21st centuries expanded that toolkit further, allowing institutions to measure, price, and transfer risk across borders and industries. In every case, transparent markets helped society harness resources more effectively and distribute them more widely. Compute, now the lifeblood of AI, is primed for the same evolution.
As veterans from two different worlds – market structure and compute economics – we see an urgent need for a neutral venue that brings capital efficiency, trust, and risk management to compute. I (Jack) have spent my career helping design and launch futures markets that permanently changed how industries operate, from equity index derivatives to e-mini contracts that unlocked global liquidity. The InfraSight team, meanwhile, has spent years building the measurement tools and risk analytics for managers to understand their compute infrastructure and workloads. By combining our strengths, InfraX will transform abstract inputs like CPU and GPU cycles into standardized, tradable Workload Compute Units; just like a barrel of oil or a bushel of wheat became universal references. For the first time, this critical resource will be priced, hedged, and benchmarked with the confidence grain traders, refiners, and financial institutions have relied on for decades.
The implications extend far beyond enterprise IT. With more than $6.7 trillion projected to be invested globally in AI and data center infrastructure by 2030, we are witnessing one of the largest industrial buildouts in modern history. Demand for GPUs and compute capacity is accelerating, yet procurement remains riddled with inefficiencies, vendor opacity, and limited visibility. Companies struggle to forecast future demand and costs, investors lack reliable benchmarks, and regulators are raising expectations around governance and control. InfraX will address these challenges directly by creating a transparent, neutral marketplace, turning compute from an opaque expense into a tradable, governable asset with embedded auditability.
Just as the creation of futures markets in Chicago helped feed the world by unlocking agricultural liquidity, InfraX will anchor price discovery for the AI era, with U.S. leadership and open global participation. Imagine a CFO hedging compute costs the way airlines hedge fuel. Picture a university research lab accessing GPU capacity at competitive rates through a transparent market. Consider a government using InfraX benchmarks to plan capacity allocation for AI growth. These aren’t hypothetical; they are the logical progression of an economy where compute is inseparable from progress.
What this enables now: executives can benchmark workloads with WCU, establish governance with auditable metrics, and participate in upcoming InfraX pilots and instrument design – turning volatility into managed exposure and strategic opportunity.
The future of compute is not simply about AI hardware and model enhancements; it’s about markets and risk management. Just as past industrial revolutions were built on the backs of commodities, the AI Revolution requires the same financial infrastructure to scale effectively. At InfraSight, we believe that compute must be governed with capital markets precision. InfraX is our platform for executing this vision, transforming a hidden risk into a tradable, investable, governable asset class.
The future of compute is here. It’s time to trade it.
