Editor's Note: The valuation frenzy of AI private companies is being transformed into a new retail trading product on crypto platforms.
In the past, ordinary investors found it difficult to buy stocks of unlisted companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. Now, platforms like Ventuals and PreStocks are beginning to offer related trading: some are betting on valuation changes through perpetual contracts, while others are obtaining so-called "equity exposure" through SPV tokens. These may not represent actual equity, but they allow retail investors to trade the valuation expectations of these popular companies 24/7 and with leverage.
What is most notable in this article is not just that Anthropic is being pushed to a $16 trillion implied valuation in the on-chain market, but that the private placement market is being further financialized. Pre-IPO assets that were previously only accessible to funds, brokerages, and high-net-worth investors are now packaged into real-time tradable, long and shortable crypto products.
However, there are risks here too. These products offer price exposure, not actual shareholder rights. Trades on Ventuals are not backed by actual equity, and while PreStocks claims to correspond to real shares through SPV, Anthropic has explicitly stated that such structures may have no legal value.
In other words, what retail investors are buying may not be a stake in AI giants, but rather a transaction regarding the valuation of AI giants. The AI frenzy has not fully entered the public market, yet it has already been financialized in the crypto market.
The following is the original article:
The race to sell retail investors tickets to the AI frenzy has made its way to mainstream markets—closed-end funds, interval funds, and special purpose vehicles are all emerging. Now, crypto platforms are also starting to offer trading products related to some of the world's most valuable private AI companies, which have had little other avenues for ordinary investors to engage.
The result is that the financialization of the private placement market has reached a new frontier: crypto infrastructure that once primarily served digital token speculation is being repurposed to allow traders to bet on Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX—and it's real-time, 24/7, and leveraged.
Ventuals and PreStocks are two cryptocurrency exchanges that have emerged in line with this trend. From the beginning of this year until last month, their trading activity has more than tripled when measured by total open interest and market value. Major cryptocurrency exchanges have also started listing pre-IPO assets, expanding the reach of such instruments 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 driven Anthropic's implied valuation up to $1.6 trillion, which is twice the valuation given by investors in the company's recent funding round.
Surge in Tokenized Private Stock Trading
In recent weeks, trading volume on cryptocurrency platforms focused on pre-IPO stocks has surged.
These figures reflect speculative positions rather than actual stock trades. They do not grant investors true ownership, and the operations of the two platforms are also different.
Ventuals, backed by the investment firm Paradigm, has traders betting on valuation changes through perpetual futures—derivatives that have no underlying assets, no expiration date, and are not pegged to any real stock trading. PreStocks, on the other hand, has taken a different approach: its tokens are minted on a one-to-one basis based on SPV exposure, aiming to track real stocks in the secondary market. This means holders own a tokenized stake claimed to represent underlying equity; however, Anthropic has explicitly warned that such structures may lack legal validity, and the company considers them void.
PreStocks founder Xavier Ekkel says these SPVs come from a network of funds and brokers. "SPVs have dominated most of the traditional pre-IPO secondary market trading, including related trades of top private companies; PreStocks is built on top of this existing structure while introducing real-time price discovery to a long-opaque market," he says.
According to Artemis Analytics data, Ventuals has accumulated approximately $500 million in total trading volume since its launch in November last year; and PreStocks has seen total trading volume surpass $630 million since its inception in September last year.
Ventuals co-founder Alvin Hsia says AI labs, rocket companies, and robot startups often dominate the headlines, but retail investors currently have hardly any channel to gain exposure to these. "Ventuals connects the public's interest in transformative technology with a tangible, tradable market," he adds.
Anthropic, SpaceX, and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.
These platforms are among the latest examples of the cryptocurrency infrastructure being repurposed for real-world assets. As cryptocurrency technology matures and extends beyond its initial applications around digital tokens, this trend has accelerated significantly this year. Tokenized sovereign wealth funds, money market instruments, and private credit tools have attracted funds into the blockchain orbit. And these pre-IPO derivatives represent the latest frontier of this shift towards retail-facing: the same permissionless architecture that once drove meme coin speculation is now being used to real-time bet on companies like Anthropic.
Jesse Leimgruber, co-founder of AI hardware manufacturer OpenHome, said he would look at Ventuals to get a rough idea of how much his Anthropic stock is worth. In April this year, he posted on X that he had received an offer for his Anthropic shares. The offer came through a traditional secondary market channel, but the price was roughly in the same range as the implied valuation on Ventuals, indicating that the on-chain derivative market may be tracking genuine institutional demand rather than just speculative noise.
Ventuals user Luke Cannon said the platform allowed him to trade more flexibly. "I've also participated in private market transactions before, but the options were quite limited, basically only long positions, and usually on a multi-year horizon, waiting all the way until IPO," he said.
According to Artemis data, Anthropic is currently the most popular stock on Ventuals and PreStocks, with double the "tokenized interest" of its competitor, OpenAI. This also reflects the broader secondary market situation: as investors turn to Anthropic, OpenAI's stock is falling out of favor.
Cannon said that when the valuations of OpenAI and Anthropic on Ventuals reached $1 trillion, he chose to short both companies' stocks, citing a cooling narrative.
Anthropic recently stated that Google will invest $100 billion in the company at a $3.5 trillion valuation; meanwhile, other investors have previously provided funds to the company at an $8 trillion valuation. Andrew Van Aken, head of Artemis' stablecoin business, said the demand for exposure to both this startup and its competitors is "universally high, whether from retail or funds."
Prior attempts to carve out stakes in these companies via digital asset technology have met with pushback. Last year, backlash ensued after OpenAI raised questions about a stock token linked to Robinhood Markets Inc., the company associated with Sam Altman. Robinhood's stock price dropped as a result. OpenAI stated in a press release at the time that the company was neither involved in the product's creation nor did it endorse it.
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