There's an effort underway to create a futures market for AI compute — the processing capacity needed to train and run AI models — akin to how investors buy and sell commodities like oil or grain. Why it matters: A compute futures market would bring more transparency, new ways to manage volatility and even more investment into what's quickly becoming a critical part of the economy. If you're an airline, you can buy oil futures to manage costs. Reality check: The big problem with treating AI compute like a commodity is that it simply is not like a commodity, Littlepage says. Zoom in: The startup's futures market is using what's known as "combinatorial" auctions to deal with the issue.