Securities Regulation Daily Wrap Up, CFTC NEWS AND SPEECHES—CFTC seeks comments on derivatives contracts for access to computing power, (Aug 20, 2026)

By R. Jason Howard, J.D.

The price of compute is “one of the most material costs of AI that affects the entire AI production stack.”

The CFTC has issued a request for comment seeking public responses to better inform its understanding and oversight of the emerging class of derivatives contracts that “reference the price of access to computing power (compute), which is the processing power primarily used by the large language models (LLMs) at the center of the artificial intelligence (AI) economy.”

The request for comment explains that the price of compute is “one of the most material costs of AI that affects the entire AI production stack.” Therefore, a compute futures market may “provide a means for managing and assuming price risks, discovering prices, or disseminating pricing information as to general trends in AI adoption.” The CFTC does, however caution that there are potential challenges to the development of a mature compute derivatives market because, among other things, dominant market participants “wield significant pricing power that may lead to manipulability, preferential pricing arrangements, and, in turn, unfair market dynamics.”

The Commission believes that the emergence of a compute derivatives market “in accordance with Commission rules and regulations would likely require standardizing variables typically associated with compute, both with respect to the price index used as a settlement reference, and with respect to the standards of compute that is required to be physically delivered.”

The CFTC is seeking comments on four main questions, each with several sub-questions, including: (1) Compute Cash Markets: Size, Liquidity, and Other Considerations; (2) Market Oversight and Susceptibility to Manipulation; (3) Customer Protection of Market Participants; and (4) Perpetual Compute Futures.

Comments will be accepted for 60 days following publication in the Federal Register.

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