Anthropic has been valued at $1.6 trillion, and the valuation expectations for private AI companies are being financialized by cryptocurrency platforms.

Written by: Ryan Weeks and Sidhartha Shukla, Bloomberg

Translated by: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor’s note: The valuation boom of private AI companies is being transformed into a new retail trading product by cryptocurrency platforms.

In the past, ordinary investors found it difficult to buy shares in unlisted companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. Now, platforms like Ventuals and PreStocks have begun to offer related trading: some bet on valuation changes through perpetual contracts, while others gain so-called “equity exposure” through SPV tokens. They do not necessarily represent real equity, but allow retail investors to trade expectations of these hot companies' valuations 24/7 with leverage.

The most noteworthy aspect of this article is not just that Anthropic is pushed to an implied valuation of $1.6 trillion on the on-chain market, but that the private equity market is being further financialized. Assets that were previously accessible only to funds, brokers, and high-net-worth investors prior to IPOs are now packaged as cryptocurrency products that can be traded in real-time and can be either long or short.

But the risks are also here. These products provide price exposure, not actual shareholder rights. Transactions on Ventuals lack actual equity backing, and while PreStocks claims to correspond to real stocks through SPVs, Anthropic has clearly stated that such structures may have no legal value.

In other words, what retail investors buy may not be equity in AI giants, but rather a transaction regarding the valuation of AI giants. The AI boom has not yet fully entered the public market, but has already been financialized in the cryptocurrency market.

The following is the original text:

The competition to sell retail investors access to the AI boom has entered the mainstream market — closed-end funds, interval funds, special purpose vehicles have all emerged. Now, cryptocurrency platforms have also begun to offer trading products related to the world’s most valuable private AI companies, which have nearly no other channels for ordinary investors to participate.

The result is that the financialization of the private equity market has entered a new frontier: the cryptocurrency infrastructure, which once primarily served speculation on digital tokens, is now being repurposed to let traders bet on Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX — and in real-time trading, open 24/7 with leverage available.

Ventuals and PreStocks are two cryptocurrency trading venues that have emerged in response to this trend. From the beginning of this year to last month, their trading activity, calculated by open contracts and market value combined, has grown more than threefold. Major cryptocurrency exchanges are also starting to introduce pre-IPO assets, expanding the reach of these tools to tens of millions of users. The cryptocurrency derivatives platform Trade.xyz, based on the Hyperliquid blockchain, is also joining this race.

On Ventuals and PreStocks, traders have pushed up Anthropic’s implied valuation to $1.6 trillion, which is double the valuation given by investors in the company's recent round of financing.

Surge in Tokenized Private Stock Trading

In recent weeks, the trading volume of cryptocurrency platforms focused on pre-IPO stocks has surged.

These figures reflect speculative positions rather than real equity trading. They grant investors no actual ownership, and the operational methods of the two platforms are not the same.

Ventuals is supported by the investment firm Paradigm, and traders on the platform place bets on valuation changes through perpetual futures — these derivatives have no asset backing, no expiration date, and are not anchored to any real stock trading. PreStocks takes a different approach: its tokens are minted on a one-to-one basis based on SPV exposure, aiming to track real stocks on the secondary market. This means that holders have shares of a vehicle that claims to hold the underlying equity; however, Anthropic has clearly warned that such structures may lack legal value, and the company considers them invalid.

PreStocks founder Xavier Ekkel stated that these SPVs come from a network of funds and brokers. "SPVs now account for a significant portion of traditional pre-IPO secondary market trading volume, including relevant transactions of top private companies; PreStocks is built on this existing structure while bringing real-time price discovery into a long opaque market," he said.

According to data from Artemis Analytics, since its launch in November last year, Ventuals' cumulative trading volume has reached approximately $500 million; while PreStocks' total trading volume has exceeded $630 million since September last year.

Alvin Hsia, co-founder of Ventuals, stated that AI labs, rocket companies, and robotics startups frequently occupy news headlines, but retail investors currently have almost no channels to gain relevant exposure. "Ventuals connects the public's interest in transformative technologies with real, tradable markets," he added.

Anthropic, SpaceX, and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.

These platforms are one of the latest cases of cryptocurrency infrastructure being repurposed for real-world assets. As cryptocurrency technology gradually matures, moving beyond its initial applications around digital tokens, this trend has accelerated significantly this year. Tokenized government bond funds, money market instruments, and private credit tools have attracted funds into the blockchain space. And these pre-IPO derivatives represent the latest frontier aimed at retail investors: the same permissionless architecture that once drove meme coin speculation is now being used to bet in real-time on companies like Anthropic.

OpenHome co-founder Jesse Leimgruber stated he would check Ventuals to roughly gauge what his Anthropic shares were worth. In April, he posted on X that he had received an offer for his Anthropic shares. This offer came from traditional secondary market channels, but the price roughly aligned with the implied valuation on Ventuals, suggesting that the on-chain derivatives market might be tracking real institutional demand rather than just speculative noise.

Ventuals user Luke Cannon stated that this platform allows him to trade more flexibly. "I had previously participated in private market trades, but the options were quite limited, basically only long positions and usually had to wait for several years until the IPO," he said.

According to Artemis data, Anthropic is currently the most popular stock on Ventuals and PreStocks, with its "tokenized interest" being twice that of its competitor OpenAI. This also reflects the broader situation in the secondary market: as investors turn to Anthropic, OpenAI shares are falling out of favor.

Cannon stated that after the valuations of OpenAI and Anthropic reached $1 trillion on Ventuals, he chose to short both companies' stocks on the grounds that the related narrative was cooling off.

Recently, Anthropic stated that Google would invest $10 billion in the company at a valuation of $350 billion; meanwhile, other investors had previously provided funding to the company at an $800 billion valuation. Andrew Van Aken, head of stablecoin business at Artemis, stated that both retail and funds have a "remarkably high" demand for exposure to this startup and its competitors.

Previously, attempts to leverage digital asset technology to gain exposure to these companies’ equities had sparked backlash. Last year, after OpenAI's equity token related to Robinhood Markets Inc., led by Sam Altman, raised questions, Robinhood’s stock price fell. At that time, OpenAI stated in a statement that the company had neither participated in the product collaboration nor endorsed it.