Prof G Markets - “AI Compute Futures” — Has Wall Street Gone Too Far?
Episode Date: August 13, 2026Ed Elson is joined by Rohan Goswami to break down the CME’s move to offer AI compute futures such that computing power can be traded like a commodity. Then, Mark Zandi returns to unpack the latest i...nflation data from the consumer price index. Finally, Ed shares his thoughts on what the recent high profile departures from OpenAI mean for the markets. Rohan Goswami is a business reporter at Semafor and the co-host of Compound Interest. Mark Zandi is the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets Youtube Channel Check out our latest Prof G Markets newsletter Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Follow Scott on Instagram Send us your questions or comments by emailing Markets@profgmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Money markets, Matt.
If money is evil, then that building is hell.
Welcome to Profi Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is August 13th.
Let's check in on yesterday's Market Vitals.
The S&P 500 climbed toward a fresh record following the latest inflation report.
More on that in a moment.
On Kalshi, the Ozzie, the rate hike this year fell to 54%.
Meanwhile, the Dow was roughly flat.
Brent Crude was relatively stable, as was the yield on 10-year treasuries.
Core weave shares rallied 19% after doubling its second quarter revenue.
And finally, SpaceX shares rose 10% after Elon Musk posted a recording of a company All Hands on X.
In the meeting, Elon told employees that AI revenue will exceed all other SpaceX revenues by next month.
Okay.
What else is happening?
Wall Street will soon be trading AI computing power like a commodity.
The CME, one of the world's largest futures and options exchanges, announced yesterday that it will start launching compute futures in October.
Each contract will represent one month's rent on an Nvidia chip.
The idea, in the CME's words, is to turn computing power into a, quote, standardized tradable commodity.
This could give data center providers and AI companies both price.
transparency and the ability to hedge against swings in the cost of compute. But it all rests on
two big questions. Number one, is compute actually a commodity? And number two, should we actually
be trading it? Here to break this down, we're speaking with Rohan Goswamy, business reporter
at Semaphore. Rohan, this is the new future of AI. We're financializing it. We're turning it
into a commodity. That's the new plan from the CME.
What is your reaction to this?
Does this make sense to you?
Look, we wrote a story a few months ago, right?
This is not a new thing, actually.
This has been in the works for some time.
Larry Fink made an oblique reference to it at Milken, right, earlier this year,
that compute was going to become a financialized resource.
And you quickly saw a couple of data providers actually step up to try and create the infrastructure
for the CME and for ICE to actually offer these as products.
I think they like to say that it's like oil or it's like electricity.
It's scarce.
it's hard to transport.
It's sort of diffuse.
I don't know that I fully agree with that,
if only because oil is not something,
oil is actually finite, right?
And so the idea that this is one to one with oil
falls apart there a little bit.
And it's also, again,
I know you and Ed Detron have talked about this a lot.
I know you've written about this a lot.
It really boils down to what one player decides to do,
and that's Nvidia, right?
If you think about the forward curve of an asset,
you can basically,
don't really understand that. That's the idea of
what direction
month by month a commodity will
trade in so they can go up, they can go down,
right? And if they go down, that's basically suggesting
that in the future, things will become cheaper.
So theoretically, you'd want to
see a downward trending forward curve
with compute futures, right?
This is logical as more chips make it to the marketplace.
It becomes cheaper and
easier for people to actually get their hands
on compute. Of course, this isn't actually
a free marketplace. It's entirely up to
Nvidia, right? The maker
of these chips to actually determine the prices.
And they are, one, could argue, disincented from creating a world where there is, A, price transparency, right?
They don't actually want people to know how much this costs.
And B, from actually making things cheaper because theoretically, as the cost of compute goes down,
their chips become less valuable.
Of course, there's more nuance to that, and I'm not, you know, certainly not you or Ed's a Trone
level versus in this, but there are some sort of competing incentives here.
Yeah.
And it also, I think, as you alluded to, raises a broader question, which is do we want to finance
this stuff, right? I know you talked about this yesterday, but this isn't the only way that Wall Street is
starting to dip its toes really aggressively into a space that had kind of before been a closed loop.
Right. So we'll get to the Nvidia part in a moment because it's true. Invidia is such an
important piece of this because this first contract that CME is going to release here is going to be
on the H-100 chip, which is Nvidia's chip. But I just want to linger on the commodity piece of this for a
moment. It seems like there is a lot of debate right now as to whether we can actually call
AI compute a commodity like oil, like gold, like wheat, all of these commodities that change,
that trade on the CME. And it seems like one of the big issues is this idea that it isn't
fungible. It isn't an identical commodity wherever you go because there are different types of
chips. Chips can depreciate over time. You know, one,
generation of chip might be worse and older and less sophisticated than another. To what extent do you
think that is a problem? Or is that something that the exchanges can just figure out?
The exchanges to a degree have kind of figured it out. If you're thinking about units of measurement
for whatever it is, hot-rolled steel is probably a good example, right? Not all steel is created equal.
Some steel is crappy, some steel is good. But generally, we've agreed to come together and say,
okay, as an index and as a forward curve of a commodity, it is a essentially,
monolithic thing. And very few, if any CME customers, are taking custody of physical commodities,
right? So I think the fungibility or the tangibility of it is less of an issue. And I think,
look, there's actually real utility, as you pointed out, for hyperscalers or even for frontier
labs, if they know that demand is going to ramp up over time or they want to manage their
downside. There are actual end users here. But I think that, like, broadly speaking, the comparison,
again, like, I hate to keep coming back to this, but
it is not ever, in my opinion, going to be a real market because it would be as it would be analogous to standard oil, right?
If there was one company that basically controlled in its entirety the flow of oil.
Now, you could argue that, of course, the OPEC countries kind of functionally do that,
but there are a lot of countries that are not part of OPEC and don't engage in that, right?
But here, there's no other game in town except for Nvidia, right?
So if Nvidia's stated mission is to make chips less scarce, to bring more chips into the ecosystem,
system, you're depending on them basically to set the price not just now, but down the road
of this asset.
Yes.
And it's so it seems that this all relates to Nvidia and more specifically to this $500 billion
memorandum of understanding financing package that they announced with the Avengers
of Wall Street, KKR, Blackstone, Black Rock, Goldman, etc.
It seems as though this is the first step to legitimize.
AI compute, specifically
Nvidia compute, as a
commodity that can be used as
collateral to raise
hundreds of billions, perhaps
trillions of dollars of debt.
Is that the gist
of what's going on here?
I think there's a fair read there, but I also think it's
kind of, it's a risk spreading mechanism,
right? If you think about the deals that
Nvidia has cut or said it will cut,
recall the $100 billion, again,
memorandum of understanding the sign
with Open AI, I don't even remember when that was,
right, this has all been concentrated in this multi-trillion dollar juggernaut that is basically
lending its balance sheet to companies that don't have credit ratings.
Anthropic, OpenAI, Frontier Labs, hypers, they're stepping in and they're saying, look,
we are good for the money, go ahead and buy our stuff.
Now, if you are an Nvidia shareholder, if you are a Nvidia bondholder, if you are the U.S.
government, frankly, that at some point starts to make you really uncomfortable, that all this
risk is lying and is concentrated with one entity that is incented.
to behave like a monopoly, right?
If you think about what Nvidia is doing,
they're subsidizing their chips
at the expense of any potential new entrant
and trapping these labs inside of their ecosystem.
Now, this is functionally doing the same thing
because, of course,
NVIDIA isn't bringing all these guys together
to go buy chips from a competitor,
but it is at least spreading the financial risk around,
but also the financial upside, right?
If you think about what it does for a Goldman or KKR or a Blackstone,
it provides them exposure to this play
without actually having to invest directly in this play.
You are essentially wrapping the risk around
invidia's diligence, around their ability to design these fabs.
If you are bullish about this space, it's great.
You are partnering with someone who knows what they're doing
and all you're doing is being good for the money.
Looking at this memorandum of understanding,
whatever we want to call it, the $500 billion.
Memorandums of understanding.
Memorandums.
As several have pointed out, it is not one cohesive vehicle.
These are one-off vehicles that we don't really yet have much clarity on.
But, sorry.
Yes.
No, that is how.
helpful clarification. Jensen Huang has said that this should assuage concerns about circular
financing. The circular financing concerns, of course, being that these companies are kind of
investing money into each other, and then those companies pay the money back to them, which then the
original company books as revenue, and then we think that the whole economy is growing, but really
the money is being recycled. This has been discussed a lot on this podcast. Jensen Huang says that
this should make those concerns less of a concern or put them to bed.
Yeah.
Does it? Should this? What do you think?
I mean, I think, look, as the public markets and the private markets have started to look
increasingly similar, so too of the risks associated in the public markets. And if you look at
the S&P 500, I don't know off the top of my head what percentage gains have been propelled by
Nvidia at any sort of AIJs in trade. But it is completely fair to say that you were either an
AI have or have not, and the have-nots go like this right now, and the haves, generally, lumply,
go like this, right?
So, and the same is true in the private markets.
If you look at the sales that are getting the real sales, not the private-to-private stuff,
it is stuff in and around AI.
It is cooling systems.
It is energy.
It is land.
It is actual data centers, right?
Everything is in AI trade.
And so at the end of the day, just because more people are financing it, it doesn't change
the key man risk.
I think about, like, there was a company in the late 90s, right?
that very famously went bankrupt later on or was rather required,
Lusin, right, which had a massive backlog of orders,
totaling into the tens of billions of dollars and they said,
there's no need for anyone to be worried here.
We are financing these things.
We are helping people with these things.
We are going to help our customers get here.
Of course there's demand, right?
Well, of course the dot-com bubble burst,
all their customers went bankrupt and Lusin was left with this theoretical backlog
of orders that actually amounted to nothing.
Shareholders were wiped.
It was acquired.
It is one of those situations where I look at this and I go,
well, there's no really avoiding this risk.
Just because there are more players involved,
doesn't mean the actual risk has gone down.
Yes.
Yeah, our research associate, Dan Shlund,
pointed me to another late 90s anecdote.
He pointed out that Enron actually tried to turn internet bandwidth
into a tradable commodity as well.
Yes.
It seemed like a good idea.
Then we overbuilt the fiber optic cable,
and then suddenly the capacity flooded the market,
the prices collapsed,
bad idea. Is that a
good analogy? In fairness to
Enron, Enron actually did build
a very pioneering energy trading
desk that was acquired. I can't remember by
whom. Maybe it was Citadel or another firm.
But an incredibly lucrative desk that actually formed
the bedrock of a lot of sort of commodities trading
in that space generally.
But to return to compute futures,
I honestly,
I don't know. I think at least with internet bandwidth,
everyone was using this, this was something that
everyone touched. You could see a market
emerging for it at some point, right?
But if you are fundamentally bearish on this space and think everything is going to zero,
it's not like the internet where at some point there will be enough human beings to satiate this demand.
If you think this is a dud, if you think this is going to zero, which some people do,
and you think it's very circular, then, then yes, the comparison is is apt in that it's fraudulent,
but it's not an apt comparison that it's not going to go in.
Yes.
All right.
Very helpful, very clarifying.
Rohan Goswami is business reporter at Semaphore.
Appreciate your time. Thank you.
Appreciate as always, Ed.
After the break, an update on inflation.
And by the way, starting Monday, this show is taking a summer break for the next two weeks.
We will be back on August 31st with a fresh episode.
We'll see you there.
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Inflation cooled slightly in July, but it remains stubbornly above the Fed's 2% target.
The consumer price index rose 3.4% from a year ago, and core CPI, which excludes food and energy rose 2.5%.
Both were down a tenth of the percentage point from the growth that we saw in June.
Gasoline prices fell from a month ago, but remain 25% higher than they were last year.
Meanwhile, prices continue to outpace wages, leaving consumers with less buying power than they had a year ago.
Still, stock prices rose on the report and government bond yields retreated.
Joining us to break down this inflation report was speaking with Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody's Analytics.
Mark, it's good to see you.
I was surprised by this report.
predicted earlier, I thought that inflation was going to rise from the previous month. I mean,
it rose 3.4% from the year ago, but I thought that we'd see higher growth than we did.
That's not what we saw. We saw a little bit lower, kind of in line. What do you make of this
report and what does it say about where we're headed in terms of inflation? Well, it was very consistent
with consensus. So, you know, economists that look at this stuff, could survey, they various sources
put together a kind of an average of those forecasts, and this was kind of right down the line,
you know, right exactly where we anticipated. You know, taking it, the monthly inflation numbers
at face value, I'd say pretty benign. You know, I think if we continue to get that kind of,
these kinds of reads, that's a good sign. A lot depends on what happens with the Iran war and
where oil and gasoline prices are going, and they're already up from where they were in July.
so, you know, that augurs poorly for the month of August. And inflation remains, as you point out,
stubbornly high and well above the Fed's target. But I'll take it. You know, Ed, look, you know,
we've got to start somewhere. Hopefully this month, last month, take it together and we get a few
string a few more good months together. That will indicate that inflation's moving in the right
direction. On gas prices, they are down, they were down very slightly from June. June was not great.
in terms of gas prices.
But it seems that they're rising again
when we look at the price of oil right now,
which just a couple of days ago breached $90 a barrel again
because it seems that, I mean,
we thought that we had a deal last week.
I mean, I feel like a broken record here.
We keep on saying there's a deal, and there isn't a deal.
We had the same thing last week.
Oil prices were coming down,
and then it didn't materialize.
Then I guess trade has sort of realized,
okay, there isn't a deal. The Iran situation remains very uncertain. How important is oil in terms of
inflation going forward? And do you predict that it might get worse? Well, it's critical. Obviously,
I mean, gas prices, going back to food, a lot of that is based on the cost of diesel because you have to
transport the food from the seaport or the farm to the store shelf. You know, the price of oil flows
through to all kinds of other prices of other goods. So it's really critical. And it has an outsized
role in the kind of the collective thinking of Americans because that's the salient price. They see
that price every day when they go to work and take their kids to school. So when oil and gasoline
prices are moving north, that makes everyone, you know, understandably upset. Very difficult
to change your driving behavior to adjust. So it's not great. You know, it looked like the, as you said,
it looked like the war was going to wind down in July. We got some.
oil flowing through the strait. Oil prices got back down. We got gasoline below four bucks a gallon,
which, you know, just for context, it was below $3 a gallon before the war started up. But it's
push back up. We're now back at $4.10, $4.15. And if that's where we stay, you know,
okay, it's a hardship, but we'll just, we'll live with it. But, you know, if the war goes off the
rails and the strait doesn't reopen at some point here in the next few weeks, next couple months,
and inventories of oil globally continue to wind down. At some point, prices are going to jump,
and we're going to be looking back at $4.55, and that'll be a real problem. So I don't think we can,
you know, it's very difficult to, we can't forecast it because obviously it depends on,
you know, these dynamics that are impossible to gauge. But, you know, hopefully the parties
involved might figure out a way to, you know, end this thing, get the straight open, get oil prices down.
If they don't, and oil prices go up, then, as I said, we got a problem.
You mentioned earlier how prices are rising faster than wages.
And that seems to me to be like the most important statistic when it comes to the consumer economy.
Like is inflation eating into your buying power or making your buying power and spending power go down?
Currently, the answer is yes.
And the answer has been yes for quite some time now in 2026.
What does this mean for one consumer spending, but also just the consumer economy?
going forward. Do you think that this is a trend that will continue?
Yeah, totally. This is a big, big deal. It's even broader than just wages. So if you look at
real, so that's after inflation, disposable after tax, so accounting for the tax cuts
in the year, income. So again, that's the shoot and match for, that's the fodder, the financial
fodder for spending. That's actually falling. It's declining on a year-over-year basis through the
second quarter and coming into the third quarter. And, you know, obviously with these
inflation statistics and prospects for higher gasoline prices, that looks like it's going to continue.
Wage growth continues to decelerate because of the tough labor market. So, you know, and that's
the average, right? So that means half of Americans are saying their real income, their real purchasing
power actually declined. Now, they can cushion the effect on their spending for a while,
and you've seen that in the drawdown in their saving. People's, the saving rate, overall saving
rate has come way in. It's not at a record low. It got lower during the, you got lower during the
the housing bubble, you know, leading up to the GFC, the global financial crisis.
But other than that, this is the lowest saving rate we've ever seen. So we're kind of right on
the edge for the consumer, the typical consumer, not the high-end net worth consumer because
they've got other financial resources, but for the typical American and certainly for the
folks in the bottom half below the average, you know, this can't be sustained for very long
and consumer spending will slow. Now, one thing, just one other quick note, the one thing that
is important to keep in mind the folks,
and we've talked about this in the past,
the folks in the top part of the income distribution,
the well-to-do, they drive the train, right?
They account for the bulk of spending.
So if they kind of hang in there,
you know, the economy can kind of struggle through,
even if the folks in the bottom,
two-thirds of the distribution of income are struggling,
and they certainly are.
I don't know if you've seen these comments from the Treasury Secretary,
Scott Besson, but he's said recently,
he went on TV and said that he's sick of hearing
about the K-shaped economy
and said that the K-shaped economy was over,
I'm paraphrasing, I believe, but that was the main thrust of his argument that we're no longer
seeing this growing disparity between the rich and America and the poor.
Yeah, I saw that.
Is that a lie?
What do you make of that?
Well, it's not consistent with the data.
And there's a lot of different data here.
So that makes it difficult in a debate.
There's no smoking gun data point we can point to say, aha, that's what we should all call us around.
But if you look at the plethora of data information that's available, I think it's pretty
clear that the income, wealth, and consumption distribution has gotten more skewed over time,
and it's very skewed at this point in time. And just give you a statistic that strikes at home
for me is that folks in the top 20% of the income distribution account for 60% of the spending.
So that gives you a sense of the, you know, the skewness that exists in the data. And, you know,
you can see it in, you know, the spending data. You can see. You can see. You can see.
it in the consumer sentiment surveys. I mean, even though we don't have a clear-cut data point to
point to, there's a lot enough other data to suggest that the K-shaped economies is in full force
and a real problem for the folks in the bottom part of the K. We also got the jobs report last
Friday. The U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs. The participation rate fell to 61.4%. I think that was
the lowest number in several years. What do you make of the job? The
jobs market right now, what does it say about the overall U.S. economy? And then also, how does it
impact the Fed's decision? Because as to balance, of course, inflation, but also the labor market.
A lot of debate here, too. But my sense is the job market's struggling. We're not creating any jobs.
We've seen that, you know, over the past year, over the past year and a half. The job growth we are
getting is in really one big sector of the economy that's health care. Other than that, the net job
growth is basically zero. The unemployment rate has come in recently in last few months, but that's
only because of the decline in labor force participation, as you mentioned. Pretty sharp decline.
I think there's probably a lot of measurement problems going on there, but it's fundamentally
saying that if you lose your job, I think what's going on is that if you lose your job,
very difficult to find another because no one's hiring. We know hiring rates are incredibly low,
and so many people become discouraged and just kind of step out of the labor market, at least for a while,
and I think that's biasing down the unemployment rate. So just if you do a little bit of arithmetic,
and you assume that the unemployment rate, excuse me, the labor force participation rate had not changed from where it was a year ago,
the unemployment rate would be over 5%. So we would have a very different kind of discussion,
if that were the case. And consistent with that is going back to the wage growth. You don't see
wage growth decelerate, certainly to the degree that it has. It's now below the rate of inflation plus
productivity growth unless you've got a pretty tough labor market, one that's struggling. And again,
I think that's the case. So as you point out, the Fed's in a pretty tough spot, right? I mean,
what do they do? Do they respond to the weaker economy job market by cutting interest rates?
Doesn't feel like that's what they have in mind. Or do they respond to the high, persistent
inflation and raise interest rates and take their chances with the job market and the economy?
My sense is that they'll probably be able to get through all of this without doing
anything, kind of thread the needle, because there's so much uncertainty here. The data's
all over the place. But, you know, the data point we got last Friday, the jobs numbers in
today's data, the CPI would suggest that they've got a little bit of room to maneuver right down
the middle, keep rates unchanged. And I think that's the most likely scenario. Although I'm outside,
going back to consensus, I'm outside to the consensus. The consensus now holds that the Fed will have to
raise interest rates to battle inflation at some point later this year into next. Before we let you go,
if you had to give the U.S. economy a grade right now, a letter grade, how would you grade it?
You know, I'd give it a C-minus.
You know, it's growing.
We're getting 2% growth, but it's not enough growth to create any jobs and make people feel comfortable about their financial situation.
So, you know, it's not a recession.
It's not, I don't think we're close to recession, but it's a pretty uncomfortable place, fragile place to be.
So I say C-minus.
And I'm a pretty easy grader.
Mark Zandi is chief economist at Moody's Analytics.
Mark, appreciate your time.
Yeah, any time, Med.
News from OpenAI.
Longtime executive and chief operating officer Brad Lightcap
is leaving OpenAI after eight years.
The COO said he's grateful to have spent most of the last decade
building the company, but he is now moving on to, quote,
something new.
Now, there's nothing unusual about a long-time executive.
leaving a company. That happens all the time, as you know. What is more unusual, though,
is more than 10 executives leaving a company. That doesn't happen very often at all, but it did happen
to Open AI. Yes, in the past few months alone, nearly a dozen leaders at OpenAI have left
the company. This week, for example, just one day before the COO announced his departure.
Open AI's head of ethics, Chloe Bacalar, also left.
And just weeks before she left,
Open AI's head of safety systems, Johannes Heideker, also departed.
That departure was preceded by chief futurist Josh Akiam's exit.
And just weeks before that, we also saw exits from Bill Peebles,
opening I's head of Sora, as well as Kevin Weil,
Open AIs head of science.
But it doesn't stop there.
Srinivas Narayanan, Open AIs head of B2Bi,
applications also left, so did the head of robotics, Caitlin Kalinowski, and so did
Chief Communications Officer Hannah Wong. All of these people left within the past several
months, which begs a pretty important question, why are they all leaving? Now, to be clear,
I don't know, but given the fact that the company keeps continually delaying its IPO,
combined with the fact that it keeps on racking up tens of billions of dollars in losses,
is you have to at least wonder if the leaders of Open AI are simply losing faith in the company.
And if that is true, well, then that is a big problem, because, as we've discussed,
the market has become increasingly dependent on the survival and the success of Open AI.
Just as a reminder, Open AI made up 70% of Microsoft's AI sales last year,
and alongside Anthropic, it'll make up nearly three quarters of Amazon's AI sales this year.
So if the stock market has become a giant bet on AI, and if AI has become a giant bet on Open AI,
then what does everyone bailing on Open AI say about the stock market?
And the answer is probably nothing good.
Now, that doesn't mean that you should sell everything.
We have never ever recommended selling, and I doubt that we ever will, to be honest, as we've said over and over,
the stock market is a long-term success machine.
You're better off riding out the corrections versus trying to time them.
It does mean that we should keep very close tabs on OpenAI.
We don't have much transparency into the financials of the company because it's still private.
But we do have transparency into the staffing.
We know who's joining and we know who is leaving.
And if a company's people are any indication as to how a company is doing,
well, then the signs at OpenAI are quite plain to see.
It's not going great.
Okay.
That's it for today.
This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.
Our video editor is Brad Williams. Our research team is Dan Chalon, Kristen O'Donohue, and Mia Silverio,
and our social producer is Jake McPherson. Thank you for listening to Profg Markets from Profgy Media.
If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. I will see you tomorrow.
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