Silicon Data Raises $30.5 Million Series A to Build the Independent Benchmark Layer for the AI Compute Economy

Silicon Data, providing GPU performance data for companies, led by Carmen Li, and the team, has announced a $30.5 million initial closing of its Series A, led by the Valor Atreides AI Fund, with additional investment from CME Ventures, DRW, F-Prime, Samsung Next, VanEck, Further, Jump, Tectonic, and Wintermute. Breed, Hack, Blank VC, Sancus Ventures, and SoGal Ventures also participated.

The Series A will support expansion across four areas: benchmark pricing, performance measurement through SiliconMark, institutional and alternative data, and risk infrastructure for derivatives, insurance, and credit markets.

The funding comes as CME Group prepares to use Silicon Data benchmarks for its planned cash-settled GPU futures market, pending regulatory approval. The instrument would allow market participants to hedge exposure to changes in GPU rental prices using a published daily benchmark.

Silicon Data CEO Carmen Li said compute is becoming a critical input for the global economy, while the infrastructure for measuring its value, performance, and risk remains underdeveloped. She said Silicon Data aims to provide the independent benchmarks needed to bring greater transparency and standardization to the compute market.

Since raising a $4.7 million seed round in March 2025, Silicon Data has grown from a small data provider into a prominent player in compute economics, with more than 1,000 registered users across semiconductor manufacturers, AI companies, and financial institutions. The company has developed nine financial-grade indices covering GPUs and LLMs, alongside market intelligence and alternative datasets tracking supply, demand, utilization, pricing, and economics across the compute ecosystem.

Part of the funding will support SiliconMark, which independently measures the real-world performance of GPU infrastructure. Identical GPUs can deliver different output depending on networking, topology, and configuration. By standardizing performance across clusters, SiliconMark can help market participants manage output risk and enable future physical delivery of compute resources.

Atreides Management Managing Partner and CIO Gavin Baker said compute has become foundational to the AI economy, but lacks the pricing infrastructure that mature commodity markets use to manage risk. He said Silicon Data is building the benchmark and pricing layer needed to support compute futures and make large-scale AI infrastructure easier to finance.

Valor Equity Partners Founder, CEO, and CIO Antonio Gracias said Silicon Data is building the measurement and market intelligence infrastructure needed as the compute economy expands. He highlighted the company’s GPU pricing transparency and performance benchmarking as key tools for navigating market uncertainty and supporting the growth of AI infrastructure.

Silicon Data spent two years building the pricing and performance data needed to support a compute futures market before one existed. The new funding will help establish common benchmarks across the compute ecosystem, giving buyers, sellers, exchanges, and financial institutions shared reference points.

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