The Shanghai Futures Exchange is currently designing a derivatives market for AI tokens, Reuters reports. This development comes as major derivatives exchanges like CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the NYSE, have separately announced they're working on launching futures contracts for GPU rentals. GPU markets are still maturing, but there's a robust spot market for GPU rental prices, typically charged by the hour. According to AI Mining Co., median prices for Nvidia H100 GPUs ranged from $1.40 to $4.27 per hour across 13 marketplaces, while H200 GPUs averaged between $2.34 and $5 per hour across 10 marketplaces. Over the past seven days, average H100 prices ranged from $2.79 to $3.33. While mature GPU markets exist, there's less infrastructure for tokens, which are fundamental to AI models. Enterprise plans for major AI companies are often denominated in tokens: OpenAI charges $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output tokens for its GPT-5.5 model. Cloud providers like Amazon are also offering token-based pricing through systems like Bedrock. The effort coincides with an unprecedented expansion of AI infrastructure, with hundreds of billions invested in data centers to meet rising GPU and compute demand. Emerging neocloud companies are competing with cloud giants like Oracle, AWS, and Google Cloud to offer services to AI firms. By targeting AI tokens, the Shanghai exchange's derivative product would link to how AI companies price their services, allowing businesses, investors, and data center operators to hedge against compute costs. *Source: [techcrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/28/just-like-gold-and-oil-well-soon-be-able-to-trade-ai-token-futures/)*