Liquid Compute raises $15M Seed

FirstMark and Chemistry co-led the round. K8 Capital, Night Capital, TrueBridge, Brainchild Holdings, UFO Holdings and angel Dmitry Balyasny also participated. The company's own announcement also lists Y Combinator among the backers. Valuation was not disclosed in the sources reviewed. The New York company, formerly called Pluto, was founded by Ronit Jain and Aarav Patel. It has applications pending with the CFTC for Designated Contract Market and Derivatives Clearing Organization status. Reported data and trading partners include BGC Group, Susquehanna Predictions and Wintermute.

The money is meant for matching and clearing infrastructure, more compute capacity across its physical grid, and compliance and market operations hires to support the CFTC filings. If the registrations come through, the company could run regulated cash-settled markets tied to prices set in its compute marketplace. The founders argue compute works more like a power grid than oil, because it varies by hardware and location and cannot be stored.

For AI founders, the product addresses a cost that is hard to predict. Compute is often a startup's largest expense, and it is usually bought through opaque contracts. A regulated price benchmark and hedging instruments could make that spend easier to budget and finance. The approval timeline is the main risk to that outcome.