Coinbase has started offering pre-IPO perpetual futures tied to two of the most closely watched private AI companies — OpenAI and Anthropic. The contracts are available only to eligible traders outside the United States and settle in USDC, the exchange's native stablecoin. The move opens a new way for offshore investors to bet on the valuation of companies that have yet to go public.
Why the offshore restriction
U.S. regulators have long taken a dim view of derivatives tied to private companies. By limiting the offering to non-U.S. traders, Coinbase sidesteps the kind of scrutiny that sank similar products stateside. The exchange made no mention of plans to seek approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or the Securities and Exchange Commission. For now, the contracts are a purely international play.
How the perpetuals work
The futures are perpetual — no expiry date, just a funding rate to keep the contract price close to the underlying asset's spot price. That underlying asset isn't a public stock. It's a synthetic price derived from secondary-market trades in OpenAI and Anthropic shares, plus any available information from funding rounds. The contracts are designed to automatically shift toward equity-linked pricing if and when IPO terms and a share count become public. Until then, the reference price is a blend of private market data.
Settlement happens in USDC, not in shares. Traders never take delivery of equity. That makes the product a pure cash-settled derivatives bet. Coinbase says the structure allows for price discovery ahead of a potential listing.
A bet on the IPO pipeline
OpenAI, valued at roughly $80 billion in its last funding round, and Anthropic, which raised over $7 billion, are the two biggest names in generative AI. Neither has filed for an IPO, but market chatter about eventual listings has been building. Coinbase is effectively letting traders front-run that event with leverage. The perpetuals give speculators a way to express a view on the companies' valuations without waiting for an actual stock debut.
The products also test the appetite for crypto-native derivatives on non-crypto assets. If they gain traction, they could pave the way for similar offerings on other high-profile private tech firms. Coinbase has not disclosed how many traders have signed up or the notional value of open positions.
The contracts are live now. Whether OpenAI or Anthropic ever publish the IPO terms that would trigger the equity-linked pricing mechanism is the open question — and the one that will determine whether this experiment becomes a standard tool or a niche bet that never quite matures.
