Investors seeking around-the-clock exposure to some of the world’s most closely watched companies now have a new way to trade, as CME Group has launched a suite of single-stock futures covering 55 U.S. equities.

The Chicago-based exchange on Monday introduced cash-settled single-stock futures, alongside micro-sized contracts on 22 companies, allowing investors to take leveraged bullish or bearish positions on individual stocks for nearly 24 hours a day. The contracts trade on CME’s Globex platform from Sunday evening through Friday afternoon, pausing only for a one-hour daily maintenance window.

The launch represents one of CME’s most significant retail-focused product expansions in recent years and comes as demand grows for markets that operate beyond traditional U.S. trading hours, particularly as earnings announcements, geopolitical developments and macroeconomic events increasingly occur when equity markets are closed.

Among the companies included are SpaceX, whose highly anticipated public listing has attracted enormous investor interest, as well as AI and semiconductor leaders including Nvidia and Micron Technology, alongside Tesla and Apple. Standard contracts represent 100 shares of the underlying stock, while micro contracts cover 10 shares, offering lower-capital access for smaller investors.

Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys described the rollout as a major catalyst for retail participation.

“Retail brokers have characterized the launch as the year’s largest retail growth catalyst, with more than 35 retail partners targeting day one/week one readiness,” Cyprys wrote in a research note.

The introduction comes as investors increasingly seek ways to hedge risk or react instantly to market-moving developments outside regular trading hours. Quarterly earnings from major technology companies, Federal Reserve decisions, geopolitical conflicts and overnight developments in Asia and Europe frequently trigger sharp price moves before U.S. exchanges open.

Unlike traditional stock ownership, the new contracts are cash settled, meaning investors receive or pay the difference in price at expiration rather than taking delivery of shares. CME said settlement will be based on each stock’s official closing price.

The exchange also argues the products provide a simpler alternative to listed options. Options pricing is influenced by factors such as implied volatility and time decay, which can complicate trading strategies. Single-stock futures eliminate those variables while still providing leveraged exposure through margin requirements, allowing traders to control larger positions with a smaller upfront capital commitment.

The launch is believed to have been inspired by broader structural changes in financial markets, where investors increasingly expect continuous access to trading. Cryptocurrency markets operate around the clock, while futures markets have long offered extended trading sessions. Bringing nearly continuous trading to individual equities narrows the gap between traditional financial markets and digital asset platforms.

The move also strengthens CME’s competitive position at a time when exchanges face mounting pressure from overseas venues offering perpetual futures, or “perps,” which have become increasingly popular among retail traders. Perpetual futures differ from traditional futures because they have no expiration date, allowing investors to maintain leveraged positions indefinitely as long as margin requirements are met.

Although equity perpetual futures remain largely unavailable within the United States, international platforms have aggressively expanded the products. Interest intensified ahead of SpaceX’s public listing, with offshore exchanges such as Hyperliquid already offering perpetual futures tied to the aerospace company before its official stock market debut.

Regulatory momentum has also shifted in favor of broader derivatives offerings. Earlier this year, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission cleared Kalshi and Coinbase to offer cryptocurrency perpetual futures, a move widely viewed by market participants as laying the groundwork for broader innovation across other asset classes.

Against that backdrop, CME’s new contracts are seen as an effort to capture growing investor demand while defending its position in an increasingly competitive derivatives landscape.

The products are also expected to benefit from enduring enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence and semiconductor companies. Nvidia and Micron remain among the biggest beneficiaries of the global AI infrastructure buildout, while Tesla continues to attract heavy speculative trading tied to autonomous driving, robotics and artificial intelligence initiatives.

CME said it intends to expand beyond the initial list of 55 stocks if customer demand supports additional listings and the securities meet the exchange’s eligibility standards.

For institutional investors, hedge funds and sophisticated retail traders, the new futures provide another instrument for hedging concentrated equity exposure, expressing directional views and responding immediately to overnight developments without waiting for U.S. stock exchanges to open.

The launch also signals that traditional exchanges are adapting to a market where continuous trading, greater leverage and faster access to high-profile growth companies are becoming increasingly important competitive differentiators.

China has sharply escalated its dispute with the United States over artificial intelligence, accusing Washington of practicing “AI hegemonism” and warning it will take retaliatory measures if Chinese technology companies are sanctioned over allegations of intellectual property theft.

The statement from China’s Ministry of Commerce comes after senior U.S. officials signaled that Chinese AI developers, including Moonshot AI, could face sanctions, export restrictions and placement on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List over claims they unlawfully copied advanced American AI models.

The exchange marks another escalation in the technology rivalry between the world’s two largest economies, extending a battle that has already included export controls on advanced semiconductors, restrictions on chipmaking equipment and tighter oversight of AI technologies.

In a statement issued Monday, China’s commerce ministry accused Washington of threatening Chinese firms without sufficient legal or factual justification.

The ministry said U.S. officials were attempting to punish Chinese companies based on allegations that they used model distillation, a machine learning technique commonly employed throughout the AI industry to improve or train new models using outputs from more capable systems.

Chinese authorities said that the United States was politicizing the issue to suppress China’s AI industry.

“For any action that causes substantive harm to Chinese interests, China will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” a ministry spokesperson said.

The ministry also characterized Washington’s approach as “AI hegemonism,” suggesting the U.S. is attempting to preserve its technological dominance by restricting Chinese competitors rather than allowing fair market competition.

The latest tensions center on Beijing-based Moonshot AI, whose recently launched Kimi K3 model has emerged as one of China’s strongest challengers to leading American AI systems. Kimi K3 has attracted significant attention for its coding performance and reasoning capabilities while offering an open-weight architecture that allows developers greater flexibility than many proprietary Western models.

Its rapid progress has fueled debate in Washington over whether Chinese AI firms are benefiting primarily from original research or from distilling the capabilities of frontier U.S. models.

The controversy mirrors the intense scrutiny that surrounded DeepSeek earlier, when its competitive performance raised questions about China’s pace of AI development.

U.S. Signals Tougher Enforcement

The diplomatic clash follows forceful comments from senior U.S. officials. Last week, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios said the U.S. government possesses information indicating that Moonshot distilled Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 model during development of Kimi K3.

Kratsios alleged the company operated a sophisticated internal infrastructure capable of conducting large-scale model distillation while rotating multiple methods of accessing American AI systems to avoid detection. He also claimed Moonshot acquired servers equipped with Nvidia GB300 AI processors and accessed computing resources in Thailand to support model training.

Neither allegation has been independently verified.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent subsequently warned that companies found to have crossed the line into intellectual property theft could face financial sanctions or inclusion on the Commerce Department’s Entity List, a trade blacklist that limits access to U.S. semiconductors, software and other advanced technologies.

“We support open-source AI and the innovation it unlocks. But open source is not open season on American IP,” Bessent wrote on X.

“When PRC firms conduct covert, industrial-scale distillation attacks that cross the line into IP theft, sanctions and Entity List designations will be on the table.”

Moonshot AI has rejected the accusations.

The company told China’s National Business Daily that Kimi K3’s advances stem from original architectural innovations rather than distillation of American models. The denial comes as Moonshot seeks fresh funding and reportedly prepares for a potential Hong Kong initial public offering, making the dispute particularly significant for its future expansion.

If the company were added to the Entity List, it could face severe restrictions on acquiring advanced U.S. semiconductors, cloud computing services and critical software, potentially slowing its ability to train future AI models.

The Entity List has previously been used against Chinese technology firms including Huawei, dramatically limiting their access to U.S. technology since 2019.

Anthropic has previously disclosed evidence suggesting attempts to extract information from its models. In February, the company said it identified more than 3.4 million interactions with Claude models linked to Moonshot AI. According to Anthropic, hundreds of fraudulent accounts were used to probe capabilities including reasoning, coding, computer vision, data analysis, tool use and computer operation.

While Anthropic has cited the activity as evidence of systematic model extraction efforts, Moonshot has consistently denied that distillation was responsible for Kimi K3’s capabilities.

Distillation Becoming The Next AI Battleground

The dispute highlights an emerging fault line in the AI industry over model distillation, a technique widely used by researchers and companies worldwide.

Distillation itself is generally considered a legitimate machine learning method. However, U.S. officials increasingly distinguish between conventional distillation conducted with authorization and what they describe as industrial-scale extraction of proprietary models without permission.

That distinction remains contentious.

Several AI researchers argue that distillation is only one component of model development and note that Chinese AI firms have built sophisticated research teams capable of independently advancing frontier AI systems.

After years of restricting China’s access to advanced AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment, Washington is now signaling that AI models themselves may become a new focus of export controls, sanctions and national security policy.

Beijing’s response suggests China is prepared to retaliate if such measures target its leading AI companies, raising the prospect that the technological rivalry between the two countries will now extend beyond hardware into the algorithms and models that underpin the next generation of artificial intelligence.