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Carmen Li

Founder & CEO, Silicon Data

Search every verified Carmen Li interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Carmen Li, founder and CEO of Silicon Data and CEO of Compute Exchange, appeared on the podcast "Where Capital Meets Compute" on September 1, 2026, to discuss the construction of GPU pricing indices and the upcoming launch of CME futures on her indices in October. During the conversation, she described Silicon Data's mission as providing data, benchmarking, and index services for compute stacks, while positioning Compute Exchange as a marketplace for physical compute resources, including GPU and token forwards and secondary GPU transactions. She stated that her indices currently track on-demand GPU rental rates, reflecting the current demand-supply curve, and noted that forward curves for models such as H100, H200, and B200 are being monitored, with H100 curves flattening while B200 and H200 show different trends. Li also discussed the challenges of underwriting GPU-backed loans, emphasizing the need for lenders to assess client contracts, contract duration, and default risk when financing GPU server purchases. She drew an analogy to freight markets rather than oil to explain compute pricing dynamics, and noted that ETF issuers have filed products against her indices before significant trading liquidity exists. She advised that those needing actual compute resources should use Compute Exchange, while those seeking market intelligence or financial products should turn to Silicon Data, describing the latter as "the SP for compute."

Recent appearances

  • Why Compute Isn't Oil, and What the Forward Curve Is Really Saying: Carmen Li (Silicon Data)

    September 01, 2026 · 📺 Where Capital Meets Compute

    Carmen Li, CEO of Silicon Data and Compute Exchange, joins Where Capital Meets Compute to break down how GPU pricing indices actually get built. We cover why she uses a freight-market analogy instead of oil, what it takes for an index to be trustworthy enough that ETF issuers file products against it before there's even trading liquidity, why the H100 and B200 forward curves are telling two different stories right now, and the real diligence gap in underwriting GPU-backed loans. CME futures on her indices launch in October. 0:00 Carmen Li introduces the compute market 4:49 AI startups face…

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  • Silicon Data Raises $30.5M to Benchmark AI Compute

    August 12, 2026 · 📺 Bloomberg Tech

    Silicon Data has raised $30.5 million to expand its pricing and performance benchmarks for the rapidly growing AI compute market. CEO Carmen Li joins Bloomberg to discuss the company’s ambition to become an "independent referee" for compute, CME’s planned GPU futures tied to Silicon Data benchmarks, and what its data says about the value and depreciation of older chips. She joins Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Tech." -------- Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg Technology on YouTube:    / @bloombergtech     Watch the latest full episodes of "Bloomberg Technology" with Caroline Hyde and Ed Lu…

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  • Carmen Li, Silicon Data & Compute Exchange | theCUBE + NYSE Wired: Robotics & AI Infra Leaders

    July 28, 2026 · 📺 SiliconANGLE theCUBE

    In this interview from theCUBE + NYSE Wired: Robotics & AI Infra Leaders 2026, Carmen Li, founder and chief executive officer of Silicon Data and chief executive officer of The Compute Exchange Inc., joins theCUBE's John Furrier and Howie Xu to discuss the volatile economics shaping the AI compute supply chain. Li reveals that on-demand NeoCloud GPU prices for A100, H100 and B200 chips have climbed 15-20% year to date, even as hyperscaler pricing stays comparatively flat. She explains why demand-side unpredictability, not supply, is the real driver of that volatility, and how Compute Exchange…

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  • She runs 2 Multi-Million Dollar AI Companies after 10 years of Corporate

    July 23, 2026 · 📺 Charles Cormier - Founder Wisdom Podcast

    Carmen Li - CEO @ Compute Exchange & Silicon Data

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  • Why a Perp Exchange Asked Carmen Li to Make a Market in Her Own Index

    June 25, 2026 · 📺 Bits + Bips

    Carmen Li is bringing GPU futures to the CME while crypto perp venues court her index. She lays out which financial wrappers actually fit which assets. 🔥 EPISODE LINK 🔥 https://unchainedcrypto.com/bits-bips... ======================================================================== Sponsors: 👉 Fidelity: Fidelity has been building in crypto and DeFi since 2014 — now they're hiring. Explore career opportunities at one of the most forward-thinking names in finance here: https://crypto.fidelitycareers.com. 👉 Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone…

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  • Why AI Is Not a SaaS Business: The Real Cost of Compute No One Talks About | Carmen Li

    June 17, 2026 · 📺 Prof. Dr. Anastassia Lauterbach

    78: Most conversations about AI focus on models, capabilities, and use cases. This episode goes into the financial planning and plumbing underneath the entire AI economy. Anastassia sits down with Carmen Li — a former Bloomberg and Citi executive turned founder — to unpack GPU compute cost volatility. Every AI application, every model inference, every startup scaling its product runs on compute — and yet there is almost no financial infrastructure to benchmark, price fairly, or hedge against the wild swings in GPU costs. Carmen built the world's first GPU compute index, published it on the Bl…

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  • Carmen Li's Plan to Build a Futures Market for Compute | Odd Lots

    June 15, 2026 · 📺 Bloomberg Podcasts

    When we spoke to DRW's Don Wilson last year, he talked about building out a GPU market that might be bigger than oil. Now, a year later, he is working with Carmen Li to do just that. Li is the CEO of two companies — Silicon Data and Compute Exchange (where she works alongside Wilson). The former company is building the index for GPU pricing while the latter is a spot marketplace for GPU procurement. Today's episode — recorded at our live show at City Winery in New York — gets into how Li is building a whole new market for GPUs at her two companies. We talk about the challenge of standardizing…

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  • Carmen Li and Panelists at AIS5 on the Token Economy, GPU Markets & AI Infrastructure Costs

    May 19, 2026 · 📺 IgniteGTM

    📍 Recorded live at AI INFRA SUMMIT 5, Plug and Play Tech Center, Sunnyvale, California As AI infrastructure scales, tokens are increasingly becoming the economic unit that ties together GPUs, cloud infrastructure, inference workloads, storage systems, and application-layer business models. At AI INFRA SUMMIT 5, Carmen Li moderated a panel exploring how token economics are reshaping AI infrastructure markets, enterprise deployment strategies, GPU utilization, and the financial models behind modern AI systems. The discussion moves through token pricing trends, GPU market dynamics, inference c…

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  • Silicon Data CEO on Creating Futures Market for Computing Power

    May 18, 2026 · 📺 Bloomberg Tech

    US derivatives exchange CME and index provider Silicon Data are teaming up to create a futures market for AI computing power. Silicon Data CEO Carmen Li joins Caroline Hyde on "Bloomberg Tech" to discuss why she thinks compute will be a top global commodity. -------- Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg Technology on YouTube:    / @bloombergtech     Watch the latest full episodes of "Bloomberg Technology" with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow here:    • 'Bloomberg Tech' With Ed Ludlow Full Episodes     Get the latest in tech from Silicon Valley and around the world here: https://www.blo…

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  • The AI Compute Market Nobody Understands | Carmen Li

    March 22, 2026 · 📺 The Twin Project

    In this episode (#142), we sat down with Carmen Li, founder & CEO of Silicon Data and Compute Exchange, to break down the layer of AI nobody really talks about: compute. Carmen explains why GPUs are becoming the new oil, how wildly mispriced the compute market still is, and why two identical chips can perform very differently depending on where they run. We talk hyperscalers vs neo-clouds, NVIDIA’s real competition, token pricing, latency, GPU arbitrage, and why many AI startups underestimate how fast compute costs can kill margins. We also dive into her founder journey—from Bloomberg to runni…

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  • Carmen Li, SiliconData | theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI Factories - Data Centers of the Future

    January 15, 2026 · 📺 SiliconANGLE theCUBE

    In this interview from theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI Factories - Data Centers of the Future, Carmen Li, chief executive officer of Silicon Data and Compute Exchange, joins theCUBE’s John Furrier to unpack a thorny question at the heart of modern AI infrastructure – when the GPUs are “the same,” why do results vary so widely? Li explains how Compute Exchange is building a more transparent spot market for GPU clusters while Silicon Data brings Bloomberg-style pricing signals and third-party benchmarking into a market that too often runs on assumptions instead of evidence. The conversation zooms in o…

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  • Carmen Li, CEO of Silicon Data: $5M+ Building the World's First GPU Compute Risk Management Platform

    June 16, 2025 · 📺 The Front Lines

    Carmen Li spent decades in financial services across trading floors and data companies before spotting a massive inefficiency in the AI/compute economy. After managing global data partnerships at Bloomberg, she witnessed AI startups struggling with unpredictable compute costs that could swing their margins from healthy profits to devastating losses overnight. Drawing parallels to how airlines hedge oil prices through futures markets, Carmen realized that compute—despite being one of the fastest-growing commodities—lacked basic risk management tools. Within months of leaving Bloomberg, she buil…

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The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →