Silicon Data Raises $30.5 Million Series A to Build the Independent Benchmark Layer for the AI Compute Economy
NEW YORK — Silicon Data, an independent benchmark and verification platform for the rapidly expanding AI compute economy, has announced the initial closing of a $30.5 million Series A funding round. The round was led by the Valor Atreides AI Fund, with participation from a group of major financial, technology, and investment firms, including CME Group, DRW, F-Prime, Samsung, VanEck, Further, Jump, Tectonic, and Wintermute. Breed, Hack, Blank VC, Sancus Ventures, and SoGal Ventures also participated.
The new capital will support Silicon Data’s expansion across four core areas: benchmark pricing, GPU performance measurement through SiliconMark, institutional market and alternative data, and risk infrastructure for derivatives, insurance, and credit markets.
The funding arrives at a pivotal moment for the global AI infrastructure market. As demand for artificial intelligence continues to accelerate, GPUs and other compute resources have become critical economic inputs. However, unlike established commodity and financial markets, the compute economy still lacks widely accepted independent benchmarks for pricing, performance, and risk.
Silicon Data aims to address that gap by creating the foundational data and measurement infrastructure required to make compute markets more transparent, standardized, and financially accessible.
Building a Price Layer for AI Compute
One of the most significant developments supporting Silicon Data’s growth is its planned partnership with CME Group, which is preparing to use Silicon Data benchmarks as the reference price for a planned cash-settled GPU futures market, subject to regulatory approval.
The proposed futures market would give market participants a regulated way to manage exposure to changes in GPU rental prices. By referencing a published daily benchmark, businesses and financial institutions could gain greater visibility into compute costs and potentially hedge against future price fluctuations.
The development represents an important step toward treating AI compute as an investable and risk-manageable economic input, much like energy, metals, agricultural commodities, and other established markets.
“Compute is becoming one of the most important inputs in the global economy, but the infrastructure for measuring and managing it is still remarkably immature,” said Carmen Li, CEO of Silicon Data. “Every mature market eventually develops independent referees — benchmarks that tell participants what something is worth, whether it performs as promised, and how risk should be measured. That is the role we are building Silicon Data to play for compute.”
From Data Provider to Compute Economics Platform
Silicon Data has expanded significantly since raising a $4.7 million seed round in March 2025. The company has grown from a specialized data provider into a broader market intelligence platform focused on the economics of AI infrastructure.
Today, Silicon Data has more than 1,000 registered users, with its research and data used by semiconductor manufacturers, AI model developers, financial institutions, infrastructure operators, and other participants in the compute ecosystem.
The company has also developed a portfolio of nine financial-grade indices covering the GPUs and large language models driving the global AI infrastructure buildout.
These indices are designed to provide greater visibility into critical market variables, including supply, demand, utilization, pricing, and overall compute economics. Silicon Data also produces market intelligence and alternative datasets intended to help investors and infrastructure operators understand changing conditions across the industry.
As the AI industry moves from experimentation toward large-scale deployment, reliable information about compute availability and pricing is becoming increasingly important. Data centers, cloud providers, AI developers, chip manufacturers, investors, and financial institutions all face growing exposure to compute costs and infrastructure performance.
Silicon Data is positioning its platform as a common source of independent reference data for these participants.
Measuring Real-World GPU Performance
A major portion of the Series A investment will go toward SiliconMark, Silicon Data’s independent performance benchmarking initiative.
The company argues that measuring GPU performance based solely on chip specifications is insufficient. Two infrastructure clusters using the same GPUs can produce substantially different real-world results depending on factors such as networking, system topology, configuration, and other infrastructure characteristics.
SiliconMark is designed to independently evaluate these differences and create standardized measurements of actual GPU infrastructure performance.
By normalizing GPU performance across different environments, SiliconMark could help market participants better understand the value and output of physical compute resources. It could also provide the foundation for new financial products designed to hedge performance and output risk.
In the longer term, Silicon Data believes standardized performance measurement could support the development of markets for the physical delivery of compute resources, creating additional financial and commercial mechanisms around AI infrastructure.
Creating Financial Infrastructure for the Compute Economy
The broader vision behind Silicon Data extends beyond publishing data. The company is seeking to establish the infrastructure needed for compute to function more like a mature commodity market.
According to Gavin Baker, Managing Partner and CIO at Atreides Management, reliable pricing information is essential when businesses and investors are making large infrastructure commitments.
“Futures markets are what let farmers finance the seed and equipment for next season instead of guessing. You can’t build against a price you can’t see or lock in,” Baker said. “Compute is now the seed and equipment of the AI economy, being built out at national-infrastructure scale with none of that machinery underneath it. Silicon Data is building the price layer for compute futures that will make the AI buildout easier to finance, and that’s a piece this cycle has been missing.”
The company’s strategy reflects a broader shift in the AI industry. As billions of dollars are invested in data centers, GPUs, networking infrastructure, and energy capacity, compute is increasingly becoming a financial and strategic asset rather than simply a technology resource.
That transformation creates demand for independent pricing, performance verification, forward-looking market data, and risk-management tools.
Institutional Interest in Compute Markets
The participation of major financial institutions and technology companies in Silicon Data’s Series A highlights the growing institutional interest in the economics of AI infrastructure.
Antonio Gracias, Founder, CEO, and Chief Investment Officer at Valor Equity Partners, said trusted measurement would be essential as compute markets expand.
“Great markets require trusted measurement,” Gracias said. “Silicon Data is building foundational data and market intelligence infrastructure that the compute economy needs as artificial intelligence scales. This is a classic pro-entropic business: real-time GPU pricing transparency and performance benchmarking insights create durable value across cycles and uncertainty. We look forward to partnering with this exceptional team.”
Silicon Data says it spent approximately two years developing the pricing and performance history required for a futures market before such a market existed. The company believes that groundwork provides an important foundation for the next stage of the compute economy.
Establishing a Common Reference Point
The new funding will allow Silicon Data to move from building historical datasets toward developing a broader financial infrastructure layer for compute.
The company’s goal is to ensure that buyers, sellers, exchanges, investors, insurers, lenders, and infrastructure operators can make decisions using consistent and independently verified reference points.
As AI adoption continues to increase, compute demand is expected to remain a central factor in technology investment and infrastructure planning. The ability to accurately measure compute prices, performance, availability, and risk could therefore become increasingly important.
Silicon Data is positioning itself at the intersection of AI infrastructure and financial markets, with the aim of bringing the transparency, standardization, and risk-management capabilities found in mature commodity markets to the emerging AI compute economy.
Through its pricing indices, performance benchmarks, forward curves, institutional datasets, and risk infrastructure, the company intends to provide the market intelligence necessary for a more transparent and efficient compute ecosystem.
For more information, visit silicondata.com.
About Silicon Data
Silicon Data is an independent benchmark and market intelligence platform for the AI compute economy. The company provides pricing indices, performance benchmarks, forward curves, and institutional market data used by compute buyers and sellers, financial institutions, exchanges, and infrastructure operators.
Its mission is to bring the transparency, standardization, and financial infrastructure of mature commodity markets to AI compute, helping businesses and institutions better understand, value, and manage one of the most important inputs in the emerging AI economy.
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