Crypto-enabled Pre-IPO Trading: Anthropic and OpenAI Perps Trade 42-106% Higher

Anthropic's Perpetuals Doubled in Valuation in Under 4 Months

Anthropic's perpetual futures (perps) are trading at an average premium of 100.5% above the company's last priced funding round, according to CoinGecko and DefiLlama data snapshotted on September 1, 2026. 

Across the 19 venues currently listing Anthropic pre-IPO perps, implied valuations range from $1.88T (Bitget) to $1.99T (Crypto.com). This is against Anthropic's $965B post-money valuation set in its May 28, 2026 Series H-4 round. The average implied valuation across all 19 venues, $1.94T, is now more than double what any priced primary transaction has valued the company at just 4 months ago.

What are Pre-IPO Perps?

Pre-IPO perps are a distinctly crypto-native instrument: synthetic, cash-settled contracts that let retail traders take leveraged long or short exposure to a private company's implied valuation without holding equity, needing accredited-investor status, or accessing a secondary marketplace like Forge or EquityZen. 

Exchanges construct a reference price, typically anchored to a data aggregator's tracked valuation or the company's last known funding round, and let the market trade around it. Unlike a spot-backed crypto perpetual, where funding rates and arbitrage against the underlying spot market pull price back toward fair value, there is no way to actually buy or short the private equity itself. That missing arbitrage mechanism is structural, not incidental, and it's the main reason these markets can sustain a persistent premium rather than one that mean-reverts. As of this snapshot, only 2 of the 183 pre-IPO companies tracked on DefiLlama's pre-IPO tracker have any perps listed anywhere: Anthropic and OpenAI.

OpenAI's Perpetuals Trade at a Comparatively Lower Premium

OpenAI perps trade at a premium but at roughly half the intensity as compared to Anthropic. Across 18 venues, OpenAI perps averaged a 42.5% premium over its $852B valuation, set in the Series F round that closed March 31, 2026 ($122B raised, led by SoftBank, Amazon, and Nvidia). Implied valuations range from $1.21T (Gate) to $1.25T (Crypto.com). Notably, OpenAI's reference valuation carries stronger evidence behind it than Anthropic's: OpenAI reaffirmed the $852B mark with a $7B employee tender offer in August 2026, priced at that same valuation. Anthropic has no comparable secondary transaction since its May round, so part of its wider premium may reflect a valuation the market has already moved past, rather than pure overpricing.

Is Pre-IPO Trading Safe?

Regulations around pre-IPO trading is currently murky and trading pre-IPO perps carries distinct risks that users should know about:

• No equity ownership: these contracts are cash-settled derivatives referencing a company's implied valuation. The position confers no shares, no voting rights, and no claim on the company itself, regardless of how the position performs.

• Possibly stale reference prices: As this data shows, funding-round valuations can sit months behind the market's own pricing, and in the absence of a newer secondary transaction, there's no way to confirm whether the market premium reflects real information or simple speculation.

• Potential company disavowal: Anthropic has publicly warned that any sale or transfer of its stock, or any interest in it, without board approval is void and unrecognized on its books, and specifically flags "forward contracts," tokenized securities, and other indirect-access mechanisms as likely worthless due to these transfer restrictions (Anthropic statement). While that notice does not name perps specifically, the underlying logic, that no unauthorized mechanism confers real equity or company recognition, applies to any instrument marketed as exposure to Anthropic shares, cash-settled or not.

Methodology

• This is a single date snapshot analysis of perps data (price, 24h volume, open interest, annualized funding rate) sourced from exchange-level data via CoinGecko, snapshotted September 1, 2026.

• Implied valuation is calculated by scaling each venue's quoted contract price to a common per-$1-billion-of-valuation unit, consistent across all venues in the dataset.

• OKX's raw quoted price uses a different contract denomination (roughly 1/10th scale) than every other venue in this dataset; it has been normalized ×10 throughout so implied valuations are comparable across venues. This does not apply to any other venue observed.

• Funding-round reference valuations are sourced from DefiLlama's pre-IPO tracker

• OpenAI's reference valuation was independently reaffirmed via a $7B employee tender offer in August 2026, priced at the same $852B mark. No equivalent post-round confirmation exists for Anthropic; its reference valuation is roughly three months old as of this snapshot with no newer priced round or confirmed secondary transaction identified.

• The Hyperliquid (entropyIO) market is newly deployed via Hyperliquid's HIP-3 framework, following the sunset of Ventuals which previously allowed OpenAI and Anthropic pre-IPO trading on Hyperliquid. As of writing, entropyIO has yet to deploy an OpenAI perps.

• Of the 183 pre-IPO companies tracked on DefiLlama's pre-IPO tracker as of this snapshot, only Anthropic and OpenAI have any identified perps listings on any exchange.

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This study is for illustrative and informational purposes only, and is not financial advice.

Anthropic Perpetual Futures by Venue

*OKX raw quote normalized ×10 to match contract sizing used by other venues. **Hyperliquid (entropyIO) is a permissionless HIP-3 deployer market, not a first-party exchange listing; treated separately from the other 18 venues in any "exchange-listed" framing.

These 19 venues represent the complete set of identified Anthropic perpetual listings as of this snapshot, not a subset of a larger pool.

OpenAI Perpetual Futures by Venue

*Crypto.com shows 0 in 24h trading volume for this contract at snapshot time; this premium may reflect a stale or unfilled mark rather than a traded price. **OKX raw quote normalized ×10 to match contract sizing used by other venues.

These 18 venues represent the complete set of identified OpenAI perpetual listings as of this snapshot.