Pre-IPO Perpetual Contracts Are Pricing IPOs Before They Happen: SpaceX's 40% First-Day Premium Was Spot On — Is Anthropic Next?

The news of Anthropic's historic initial public offering has brought a wave of relief to tech stock investors.

The reaction in the perpetual futures market may bring even more relief.

As Anthropic prepares to raise funds through an IPO this month, traders in offshore markets are heavily betting that the AI giant will see a sharp "pop" on its first day of trading.

Predicting the first-day reaction to an IPO is nearly impossible, but a new and rapidly growing corner of the market may offer some clues.

Pre-IPO perpetual contracts — instruments designed to track the prices of private companies — trade on decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges such as Hyperliquid, Coinbase, Binance, and OKX.

Currently, the Anthropic contract on Hyperliquid implies a share price of $98 and an implied market capitalization of roughly $1.7 trillion, more than 30% above the $70 to $78 offering range disclosed in the company's updated S1 filing.

Although the exchange's trading is currently not open to U.S. investors, according to exchange data, the two contracts tracking Anthropic on Hyperliquid recorded combined turnover of about $250 million over the past 24 hours.

Hyperliquid's Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual contract began trading two weeks ago at $138, then stabilized in a roughly ten-dollar range between $110 and $120 before last week's tech stock selloff, with the contract price briefly falling below $94.

In the view of supporters of this new asset class, the pricing of perpetual contracts proves that bankers intentionally underprice shares before an IPO to ensure a post-listing "pop."

Take SpaceX as an example: the argument appears to hold. SpaceX's pre-IPO perpetual contract traded at a premium and converged with the stock price at the time of the IPO, after which the stock immediately enjoyed a three-day rally totaling as much as 40%.

The news that Anthropic is about to launch its roadshow may be putting pressure on rival OpenAI. According to Hyperliquid trading data, the perpetual contract tracking OpenAI's market value fell 7% to $1.27 trillion, with turnover of $2.8 billion over the past 24 hours.

Shares of publicly listed Treasury company Hyperliquid Strategies (PURR.US) fell 4% on Tuesday. The company invests in the HYPE token that powers the exchange. The stock has risen 150% so far this year.