Ornn AI

Ornn AI Inc. ("Ornn") is a New York-based company building financial and market infrastructure for the compute economy. Its core product line begins with price benchmarks: the Ornn Compute Price Index (OCPI), a transaction-based index tracking the realized cost of GPU compute across cloud and on-premise providers, plus benchmark GPU indices intended to create fungibility across regions and cluster configurations. Earlier descriptions of the company center on an H100 Compute Index providing hourly, real-time pricing for H100 compute resources. The company has also announced the Ornn Token Price Indices (OTPI), which benchmark the realized cost of inference tokens from Anthropic and OpenAI.

On top of the indices, Ornn is building two related businesses. The first is a compute exchange: a U.S.-regulated venue offering cash-settled traditional and perpetual futures and derivatives on GPU compute hours, with exchange and clearing systems designed under CFTC-aligned standards using USD cash collateral, transparent reporting and central clearing. The second is Ornn Compute, a physical compute marketplace launched in June 2026 that aggregates GPU capacity from public clouds and neoclouds into a single platform with standardized onboarding, a secondary market for transfers, and on-demand sublets. Operators receive diversified demand from a basket of tenants under a single offtake contract instead of underwriting tenants individually, while buyers get visibility into the site, hardware configuration and terms of each cluster reserved.

The stated aim is to give compute the price layer, hedging tools and capital base that other infrastructure and commodity markets possess, allowing AI companies to lock in training and inference costs, data-center operators and cloud providers to presell capacity, lenders and investors to manage collateral risk tied to GPU depreciation, and speculators and market makers to gain exposure to compute as an asset class.

Founding story

Ornn AI Inc. was founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduates Kush Bavaria (Co-Founder and CEO) and Wayne Nelms. The founders argue that buyers of compute are shut out, overpaying, or locked into opaque contracts they cannot benchmark or exit, while operators must underwrite tenants one at a time even as usage shifts across clusters, regions and hardware types. They frame the compute market as needing, on a compressed timeline, the price transparency that took the oil market nearly a century to develop, and note that the AI buildout is being financed without a price layer, hedging tools or the capital base that prior infrastructure buildouts required. Their prior professional experience is not documented in the available sources.

Business model

Ornn operates as an index/benchmark provider and market operator. It publishes compute price indices used as settlement-grade benchmarks, licenses or distributes them (including via the Bloomberg Terminal and to exchange partners such as ICE), and is building a regulated, cash-settled futures and derivatives venue referencing those indices as well as a marketplace intermediating physical GPU capacity between operators and buyers, including a secondary market for transfers and sublets.

One source describes a subscription-based model in which clients pay for access to the H100 Compute Index according to usage, with tiered pricing plans covering both small startups and large enterprises; clients transact directly with the company for real-time pricing data. Revenue arrangements for the exchange and marketplace businesses are not detailed in the sources.

Traction

Reported traction includes two disclosed funding rounds totaling approximately $38.7 million, the addition of the Ornn Compute Price Index to the Bloomberg Terminal, the launch of the Ornn Token Price Indices covering Anthropic and OpenAI inference token costs, ICE's May 2026 statement that it will use Ornn's index for compute futures contracts (pending regulatory approval), and the June 24, 2026 go-live of the Ornn Compute marketplace. One source lists the company at 2-10 employees.

Latest developments

On June 24, 2026 Ornn announced a $33 million seed round co-led by a16z crypto and Galaxy Ventures, with participation from Nordstar and SV Angel and existing investors Crucible Capital, Vine Ventures, Link Ventures and BoxGroup, and simultaneously launched Ornn Compute, its physical GPU capacity marketplace. Funds are to be used for hiring and marketplace expansion. In May 2026, ICE said it plans to use Ornn's pricing index for compute futures contracts, subject to regulatory approval.