About GCPI Research

An independent academic index for global AI inference costs.

Author

Xianghan Cao

Doctoral Researcher, Oulu Business School, University of Oulu (Finland).
Research focus: AI-based measurement of climate change and geopolitical shocks on financial markets.

The GCPI applies the same event-study and risk-pricing methods from that research to the AI compute market — a domain where supply shocks, geopolitical risk, and information asymmetry create the same conditions under which financial price benchmarks are most valuable.

About the Index

What GCPI is and is not

GCPI is an independent academic research product. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or produced in collaboration with any covered vendor or commercial entity.

All pricing data is sourced from publicly available vendor rate cards and benchmark publications. The index is intended for research, education, and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial, investment, or procurement advice.

Data and methodology are published under CC BY 4.0 — you may freely use, share, and build on this work, provided appropriate credit is given.

How to Cite

Citation formats

Please use the following when citing the GCPI dataset or methodology in academic work.

APA

Cao, X. (2026). Global Compute Price Index (GCPI) — Inaugural Dataset and Methodology (v0.1.0) [Dataset]. GCPI Research. https://doi.org/[DOI pending]

BibTeX

@dataset{cao2026gcpi,
  author    = {Cao, Xianghan},
  title     = {Global Compute Price Index ({GCPI}) ---
               Inaugural Dataset and Methodology},
  year      = {2026},
  version   = {0.1.0},
  publisher = {GCPI Research},
  doi       = {[pending]},
  url       = {[pending]},
  note      = {Data version: 2026-04-a.
               Methodology version: 0.1.0.
               Oulu Business School, University of Oulu.}
}

A Zenodo DOI will be assigned upon the first formal GitHub release. The DOI and repository URL will be added to this page and to docs/CITATION.cff at that time. Until then, please cite the methodology version and data version as shown above.

License

Creative Commons BY 4.0

Data, methodology documentation, and reproducibility scripts are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.

You are free to share and adapt the material for any purpose, including commercially, provided you give appropriate credit, link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made.

Independence & Conflict of Interest

Editorial independence

GCPI Research has no financial relationship with any covered vendor. Price data reflects publicly available list prices; no vendor has provided data, funding, or review of this index. Geopolitical risk scores reflect the author's independent analytical judgment.

If you identify an error in price data or methodology, please open an issue on the GitHub repository (link to be added) or contact the author.