Spotlight interview with...
Carmen Li
CEO of Silicon Data
Spotlight interview with...
Carmen Li
CEO of Silicon Data
Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to found Silicon Data?
I’m not one of those twenty-year-old geniuses who had an idea and became a billionaire early in their career.I spent around 20 years in professional services, mainly in North America, with some time in London and mostly in financial services. Eventually, I had an idea I could execute.
Starting later in life has upsides: more experience, a stronger network, and better access to funding. In a regulated market like ours, that really matters. Today, Silicon Data is the world’s first and only GPU index provider. Our clients include major hedge funds, semiconductor manufacturers, and hyperscalers who use our benchmarks directly.
Where did the idea come from?
My career began in high-frequency trading and options market making, so I knew commodities and risk management well. At Bloomberg, I ran Global Data Partnership –covering all products and content ecosystem integration worldwide.
Just before starting Silicon Data, I worked with AI agent companies serving hedge funds. They had a problem: their SaaS revenues were fixed, but their costs (GPU rentals) were highly volatile, swinging between $3 and $9 per GPU hour. Margins went from healthy to negative overnight. That’s like telling an airline it can’t hedge fuel. Businesses can’t survive like that.
For centuries, we’ve had futures and options for commodities. Compute is becoming the world’s most critical resource –possibly even bigger than all energy combined over the next five years. We need financial products to manage compute risk too.
This is where I saw the gap. West Coast companies understood GPU hardware but not derivatives. East Coast firms understood derivatives but not GPUs. I had experience in both, so I took the plunge and quit Bloomberg.
Within five minutes, my first boss, founder of DRW, backed me with $1M. Soon after, we raised a joint seed round from DRW and Jump Trading among other reputable investors.
What’s Silicon Data working on today?
Beyond indices, we also build benchmarks called Silicon Mark for GPU performance. Think of it like rating an asset class. Transparency matters: how do you value performance, pricing, and risk across different chips and design houses? Our benchmarks are now used globally, and we’ve been recognised by IEEE as one of the best standards for GPU benchmarking.
You’ve grown purely through inbound interest so far. What role do you see marketing and communications playing as you scale?
Every one of our 100+ clients has come inbound, which is a great validation of the product-market fit. Until now, I’ve focused heavily on client and product strategy, but as we scale, I’m building out a senior team across marketing, sales, and operations to ensure we can meet global demand efficiently. Our audience is highly specific: financial services providers, AI technology firms, and senior technical leaders. It’s not a consumer product – my mum doesn’t need a GPU index!
So the goal isn’t education in the broad sense – it’s more about sharing insights that resonate with a very niche, senior audience, which is why I find that conferences and panels help more than random networking, for example. We’re doing cutting-edge work, and people need time with it to understand its implications.
The challenge now is scaling that reach efficiently, globally, and without adding noise, so our future marketing and communications strategy will be centred around tapping into those highly targeted audience groups and leading the conversation on the topics we know we can truly own with authority and authenticity.
Speaking of global reach, how do you see adoption playing out?
Historically, data products get adopted first in the US, then Europe (France and the UK), then Singapore, Japan, and Australia. But with compute, China is very advanced too, so it depends on the use case.
Right now, it’s still all inbound, which is a luxury. But to hit my double digits revenue goal, we’re developing a structured, global marketing and communications strategy. That means building a thought-leadership program around the idea of compute as a financial asset — highlighting the credibility of our benchmarks and helping shape the global conversation on compute economics. A high growth communications campaign can never be a bad thing to invest in, but for startups with limited resource, there is a time at which it becomes more valuable than before. We’ve done well organically, but there needs to be a concerted effort to build brand awareness to go global, and I’ve seen a lot of other B2B tech brands do that exceptionally well.
How bold do you think comms should be at this stage?
Better to be known than unknown. I’m open to being direct, even edgy, as long as it’s factual. Politics is one area I avoid, but otherwise I welcome challenge. Our industry is highly regulated, so precision matters. I don’t want fluff – I want facts, insights, and clear extrapolations and so does my audience.
What advice would you give CEOs a year behind you?
Hire fast, fire fast. If it’s not working, it’s unfair on both sides to drag things out. Get the right people in place quickly.
As a CEO, how do you want marketing and comms performance reported?
For me it’s business impact: leads, revenue, adoption. Vanity metrics don’t matter to me. I care about measurable impact, whether that’s website traffic, domain authority, how often GPTs and search pick us up or how many MQLs convert. That’s what matters.
Have you ever had to pivot your messaging?
I’m a naturally direct person and try to stay true to that. I’ve publicly criticised bad reporting when the math was wrong. Some say that’s not “how you do PR,” but I value accuracy above all else. Maybe others prefer to tailor their message to broaden their appeal, but I’d rather be precise and transparent as I think that’s a highly valued characteristic in the industry we’re in.
I think messaging can and should evolve as the business grows and the landscape changes, but I certainly wouldn’t adapt my message to tempt a certain outcome if I know what I’m saying is factual and I wholeheartedly believe in it.
Carmen Li
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