How Coinbase’s OpenAI & Anthropic Pre-IPO Futures Work

It is a way to bet on private valuations, and it carries risks that go beyond ordinary crypto trading.

Two of the biggest upcoming IPOs:

OpenAI and Anthropic.

Get exposure to both now on Coinbase, with pre-IPO perps.

Start trading before they go public. pic.twitter.com/YCUNy9YsUT

— Coinbase 🛡️ (@coinbase) June 22, 2026

What This Actually Is

The two products, ANTHROPIC-PERP and OPENAI-PERP, went live on June 22, 2026. They are perpetual futures contracts, the same instrument crypto traders already use, applied here to private companies. The key thing to understand is what you are and are not buying. You are not buying equity, a stake, a pre-IPO share allocation, or any claim on either company. There are no voting rights and no dividends. What you are trading is a contract whose price tracks the market’s view of each company’s valuation, settled entirely in Circle’s USDC stablecoin.

In plain terms, this is a tool for speculating on a number, what the market thinks Anthropic or OpenAI is worth, rather than owning a piece of the business behind it.

How It Works

It tracks valuation, not a share price

Because these companies are private, there is no public share price to track, and the exact share count is not disclosed until an IPO prospectus is filed. So Coinbase prices the contract off total valuation instead of a per-share figure. The index is the company’s estimated equity valuation divided by one billion, which avoids the guesswork of inventing a share price before one officially exists.

It trades around the clock with leverage

The contracts run 24/7 with no expiry, and traders can go long or short with leverage, though Coinbase applies conservative leverage caps (the SpaceX version that preceded these launched at 5x). All profit and loss settles in USDC, and the format is the same perpetual futures structure crypto traders already use. To reduce manipulation, the platform uses fair-value and mark-price methods that keep the contract tied to the underlying valuation index rather than letting thin order books drive sudden liquidations..

What Happens If They Go Public

This is the clever part of the design. If Anthropic or OpenAI completes an IPO, the contract does not expire or force you to close out. It automatically converts into a standard stock perpetual future tracking the now-public share price, with positions rebased to the official share count. No rollover, no reopening, continuous exposure from private to public.

There is a real precedent. Coinbase ran the same playbook with SpaceX: when it went public, the pre-IPO contract was rebased on June 11 and converted into a standard equity perp on June 12, with its price feed bridged to live equity data. So the conversion mechanism is not theoretical, it has already happened once.

Who Can Trade It, and Who Cannot

This is a hard line worth stating clearly: US persons cannot trade these contracts. They are offered through Coinbase International Exchange, which operates via Coinbase Bermuda Ltd. under a Bermuda Monetary Authority license, and are available only to eligible users in supported jurisdictions outside the United States. Eligible traders also need an active international derivatives account and have to pass appropriateness checks before trading. US derivatives regulation is the reason American retail is shut out entirely.

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Why the Risks Are Higher Than Usual

Coinbase itself flags these as carrying elevated risk, and the reasons are worth taking seriously rather than skimming. A public stock has quarterly earnings, regulatory filings, and analyst coverage to anchor its price. A private valuation has almost none of that. That creates several specific dangers.

Price can move on thin information. Without public financials, a single leaked funding-round figure or one media report can swing the perceived valuation sharply. Leverage magnifies the damage. Thin liquidity combined with borrowed exposure means a sudden price gap can liquidate a position before a trader can react or adjust margin. And there is a risk unique to this product: if an IPO is delayed for a long time or never happens, the entire pricing basis, the march toward a public listing, loses its anchor. These are not the standard risk-disclaimer footnotes; they are structural features of betting on a company that has not opened its books.

Why Coinbase Is Doing This

The launch fits Coinbase’s stated push to become an “everything exchange,” a platform spanning crypto, stocks, options, and now private-company exposure, which it detailed at a June 16 product event. It also lands in a fast-growing and competitive niche. The timing tracks the companies themselves: Anthropic confidentially filed for an IPO in early June, and OpenAI has been reported to be moving toward one as well.

For now, the takeaway is straightforward. These contracts open a door that used to be closed, exposure to private-company valuations, to a wider set of traders outside the US, but they do it through a leveraged derivative on companies with no public financials. That combination is what makes them both novel and high-risk.

The post How Coinbase’s OpenAI & Anthropic Pre-IPO Futures Work appeared first on Coindoo.