The pre-IPO (initial public offering) perpetual futures market for AI firm Anthropic has gone live on the Hyperliquid blockchain, as previous contracts have closed within an average of 25% of the IPO issue price.

Perpetual futures are contracts without an expiration date that track the spot rate of the underlying asset through a funding rate. Pre-IPO perpetual futures allow traders to take a view on the company’s share price once it goes public. The Anthropic contracts were launched after Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, filed its S-1 on 26 October 2026 with the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission.

The contracts provide synthetic exposure as they are not shares, IPO allocations, tokenized equity, or claims on the issuer, so holders do not receive ownership, dividends, voting rights, or primary-market allocation rights. Before listing, there is no public equity price so the pre-IPO perpetual market operates with a discretionary reference price. The market may also display an initial reference share count and an implied initial reference market cap.

The Hyperliquid Research Collective (HRC), a research hub for Hyperliquid, said on X that the pre-IPO perpetual future will convert to a standard perpetual derivative once Anthropic starts trading on Nasdaq, which is expected around 20 November, with a 60-day grace period if the IPO slips.

In our view, this is one of the most important moments in Hyperliquid's history.

Anthropic is one of the largest IPOs ever, with a Nasdaq listing expected around November 20. Until then, Hyperliquid is one of the few venues where it trades, through trade[XYZ]'s pre-IPO contract,… https://t.co/6WlT0d9TW4

— Hyperliquid Research Collective (HRC) (@HyperliquidR) October 26, 2026

“How efficiently this market prices Anthropic ahead of the listing will matter a lot for the credibility of IPOPs (pre-IPO perpetuals) as a whole,” added HRC. “And with OpenAI likely not far behind, all eyes could stay on Hyperliquid for the foreseeable future.”

TradeXYZ, a perpetual futures exchange on the Hyperliquid blockchain, inaugurated the pre-IPO perpetual contract market on 1 May 2026 when it listed a contract for Cerebras Systems, the artificial intelligence chip manufacturer. On 18 May TradeXYZ subsequently launched a perpetual futures contract ahead of the IPO of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and artificial intelligence company.

Petro Dmytrilev, a decentralised finance (DeFi) analyst, has analysed six pre-IPO perpetuals on Hyperliquid have run all the way into a public listing.

Six pre-IPO perps on @HyperliquidX have now run all the way into a real listing, and on average the stock opened within 25% of where the perp priced it the night before, for companies that had no public price at all until that morning.

I tracked every @tradexyz and @tradeparagon… https://t.co/4cIrV8SffG pic.twitter.com/bY8MuoHeB1

— Petro D. | Research (@PDmytriiev) October 26, 2026

@PDmytriiev added on X: “Four stocks opened above their perp and two below, and the split ran along geography: the US perps mostly ran too hot, while every Chinese listing opened higher than the perp implied.”

For Cerebras, @PDmytriiev said the perpetual priced at $284 on the morning of listing, and the stock opened 23% higher at $350. He added: “Most of that gap closed in the final hours before Nasdaq trading began, which keeps $CBRS the cleanest price-discovery case on the platform.”

For SpaceX, @PDmytriiev added that this was the deepest market, with roughly $800m of volume before listing. The $150 issue price was 15% lower than the $177 perpetual mark, after the contract had traded as high as $230 in the pre-IPO window.

“The perps got the direction right in five of six cases, and CBRS shows that with enough depth the gap can close almost entirely by the open,” added @PDmytriiev. “With Jio listing on Oct 28 and Anthropic filing publicly, the next few months should show whether that accuracy improves as liquidity grows.”

The pricing for the Anthropic pre-IPO perpetuals is available on Bloomberg, so it is available to traditional finance:

🆕The highly anticipated Anthropic ($ANT) pre-IPO perpetual from @tradexyz on @HyperliquidX is now live on WSL HYPE <GO>: pic.twitter.com/F50JeRwsiQ

— Michael McDonough (@M_McDonough) October 26, 2026

Anthropic token on Hyperliquid moving a little bit lower. Currently pricing the company at around 1.88 trillion. pic.twitter.com/YgMVwPPnAd

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) October 26, 2026

OxResearch, a newsletter from Blockworks, highlighted that Entropy, another Hyperliquid HIP-3 exchange, listed Anthropic valuation perpetuals in August this year. The newsletter said: “While the two markets differ in what they are anchored to, they both largely trade on their own order books, which have converged quickly to one another thus far. Both markets value Anthropic at nearly double its Series H valuation.”

Entropy’s io:ANTH pre-IPO Anthropic market has processed around $669m in cumulative volume since its launch, and has $53m in open interest, according to Blockworks Research.

“Until a price range is set closer to the IPO date, the xyz:ANT and io:ANTH markets remain the closest thing to a live market price for what is shaping up to be one of the largest IPOs on record,” added the newsletter. “Whether traders are correctly pricing the company at nearly double its last private round will become clear in mid-November, at which point xyz:ANT converts to a standard equity perp and io:ANTH converts under its IPO terms.”

Harrison Rolfes, senior analyst, private company coverage at PitchBook published a detailed analysis of Anthropic’s S-1 filing and valued the company  at $1.42 trillion, about 29% below the reported $2 trillion IPO valuation.

Rolfes said in a report that the business earns more than investors could see before the filing, but pay-as-you-go revenue and founder control give outside shareholders less.

“Our value of about $84 a share is 42% above the Series H share price,” added Rolfes. “We would own the shares at or below $1.25 trillion, near the low end of our range, at half size until the payment schedule is public.”

Payward partnership

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, announced in September this year that it intends to deploy onchain perpetual futures for US clients, starting with Hyperliquid HIP-3* markets, the blockchain protocol’s first builder-deployed permissioned perpetual markets. HIP-3* will provides additional functionally for permissioned markets in a future network upgrade, according to Hyperliquid.

Hyperliquid is the first protocol that Payward plans to deploy for U.S. clients to make DeFi products more accessible within established regulatory frameworks.

https://t.co/P4UQNkgbIA pic.twitter.com/AFwEmyn6VW

— Payward (@Payward) October 27, 2026

Calvin Leyon, head of onchain at Kraken, said in a statement: “Payward is pioneering a framework on Hyperliquid that we believe can be replicated across products and markets globally. By pairing Hyperliquid’s cutting-edge protocol with Payward’s infrastructure, liquidity and regulatory stack, we intend to bring a premier onchain product to users in the U.S. market.”

Bitnomial, Payward’s CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse, would be the HIP-3* deployer: it would create, own and administer the market and clear and settle the contracts.

NinjaTrader Clearing, Payward’s CFTC-registered futures commission merchant, would carry the client accounts. Jon Pham, head of U.S. derivatives at Payward said in a statement that, if approved, a U.S. client would open a futures account with Payward’s registered broker and trade new perpetual futures contracts on Hyperliquid, cleared through the same clearinghouse that already supports the crypto perpetual contracts Payward already offers U.S. clients.

Arjun Sethi, co-chief executive of Payward, said in a statement that multiple venues run builder-deployed perpetuals on Hyperliquid. However, one holds 98% of the open interest, and no registered U.S. exchange or clearinghouse has deployed a market on Hyperliquid.

“Payward intends to be the first, holding the keys and carrying the regulatory obligations,” added Sethi. “We already list our own U.S. perpetuals and intend to deploy on Hyperliquid as well, putting clients first, not ourselves.”

Perpetual futures have traded outside the U.S. since 2016 and there was trading volume of more than  $85 trillion changed hands globally, according to CoinGecko’s 2026 State of Crypto Perpetuals Report.

Jeff Yan, co-founder of Hyperliquid, said on X:

Excited to work with Payward to forge a path for onchain derivatives built on Hyperliquid's infrastructure. Kraken is one of the most trusted and respected exchanges in crypto. They are also true believers in the technology and crypto ethos. We're honored that they are building… https://t.co/2vN2E2fkTw

— jeff.hl (@chameleon_jeff) October 27, 2026