China is building a market to trade AI’s ‘biggest currency’ and it is aimed straight at the US
China is quietly designing a financial market where companies can trade AI tokens, the smallest unit of data that AI models chew through, and the move is squarely aimed at keeping pace with the United States. According to Reuters, the Shanghai Futures Exchange is in the early stages of building futures contracts tied to these tokens, which sit at the heart of how AI services are priced. It is a different bet from the one Wall Street is making, and the timing is not a coincidence.
The exchange’s research is preliminary, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, and it is driven partly by the AI rivalry with Washington.
