Liquid Compute, a company building a marketplace for AI computing infrastructure, has raised $15 million in seed funding as it comes out of stealth.
The round was co-led by FirstMark and Chemistry, with participation from K8 Capital, Night Capital, TrueBridge, Brainchild Holdings, UFO Holdings and angel investor Dmitry Balyasny.
Founded by Ronit Jain and Aarav Patel, Liquid Compute was previously known as Pluto and is a Y Combinator Winter 2024 company. The founders met while studying engineering at UC Berkeley.
“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 Ronit Jain, CEO of Liquid Compute. “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.”
“Compute is rapidly becoming strategic infrastructure for the United States,” said Adam Nelson, Partner at FirstMark. “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.”
Liquid Compute is building a marketplace that connects fragmented AI computing capacity with businesses that need computing resources. The company aims to make the market more transparent by helping buyers and suppliers match available computing capacity based on factors such as location, timing and infrastructure.
The company is also developing a financial market for AI computing. Its pending applications with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) could allow it to create regulated cash-settled markets linked to prices from its underlying compute marketplace.
“Most people building in this space are treating compute as a fungible commodity like oil, and most of the infrastructure being built reflects that,” said Mark Goldberg, Managing Partner at Chemistry. “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.
“BGC 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,” said Arran Rowsell, Head of Strategy at BGC Group.
The company will use the new funding to build its matching and clearing infrastructure, expand the amount of computing capacity available through its marketplace and develop pricing and market data tools.
Liquid Compute is also hiring for compliance and market operations as it works toward its pending CFTC applications.
