Anthropic Set to IPO, Crypto Market Prices in $1.9 Trillion Valuation?

Perpetual contracts and prediction markets have jointly anchored Anthropic's implied valuation around $1.9 trillion.

Written by: Mahe, Foresight News

At the beginning of October, Bloomberg reported, citing informed sources, that Anthropic is seeking to go public as early as mid-November, with a potential formal marketing launch for its IPO during the week of November 9, aiming to begin trading before Thanksgiving on November 26, and still expecting to complete the listing by the end of the year at the latest.

Additionally, according to the latest data from Polymarket, the market bets that the probability of Anthropic's IPO before November 20 is 66%, and the probability of an IPO before December 31 is 87%.

Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, citing informed sources, indicated that Anthropic plans to list on the Nasdaq, but this has not yet been officially confirmed. The company has not yet disclosed its stock code or price range, but trading around it has been ongoing for several months in the crypto market.

Two parallel pricing systems are providing answers. One is perpetual contracts: exchanges like Binance, Bitget, and Hyperliquid. The other is the prediction market, with a contract matrix on Polymarket concerning Anthropic—IPO timing, first-day closing market value, etc.

The former outputs a point, while the latter outputs a distribution. By overlaying the two, we obtain a pricing panorama that traditional investment banks would never publicly disclose before a roadshow, but is currently accessible to everyone.

Pre-IPO Pricing Near $2 Trillion

The uniqueness of the Pre-IPO perpetual contract pricing mechanism lies in its lack of spot index anchoring. For listed company contracts, the funding rate is responsible for tethering the price near the stock price; for Anthropic, there is no stock price available for anchoring—the only underlying tracked by the contract is the holder's expectations of the future.

This gives the quotes a naturally amplified emotional attribute.

On the exchange side, Binance's ANTHROPICUSDT estimates the equity value at about 1 billion shares, currently quoted at $1,898, with a 24-hour trading volume of $17 million, implying a valuation of $1.898 billion. Bitget quotes $1,902, with a 24-hour trading volume exceeding $12 million, implying a valuation of $1.902 billion. OKX, estimating a total equity of 10 billion, currently quotes its perpetual contract at $193, implying a valuation of $1.94 trillion.

On-chain perpetual contracts, Hyperliquid's ANTH market operated by HIP-3 deployer Entropy reports $1,927, with a 24-hour trading volume of $12.18 million, and a contract open interest exceeding $46 million, implying a valuation of $1.927 billion.

The implied valuations of both are nearly consistent.

This level represents a premium of exactly double the post-financing valuation of $965 billion determined during Anthropic's Series H financing on May 28—during which no new round of primary market pricing has endorsed it in the subsequent five months.

According to a draft of the IPO prospectus obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Anthropic's revenue in the first half of the year was $16.3 billion, compared to $1.1 billion in the same period last year; the net loss for the first half was $80.7 billion, compared to $13 billion in the same period last year. Its revenue growth exceeded tenfold, while the net loss expanded about sixfold.

Anthropic's spending on computing power and infrastructure in the first half of the year was nearly $9 billion, while the total related expenditure for 2025 is projected to be $7.3 billion. Anthropic's future cloud computing protocol spending is estimated to be around $450 billion over the next 7 to 10 years; additionally, the company has committed to pay over $160 billion for leasing Google chips. Anthropic's future infrastructure spending commitments have exceeded $600 billion, and if agreements still under negotiation are included, it could increase by up to $150 billion.

The AI bubble theory has raised concerns among some market participants about the sustainability of its revenue.

Recently, the sharp decline in U.S. semiconductor stocks has also cast a shadow over the market.

It is worth noting that Anthropic does not recognize these trades at the company level. Its official investor warning states that any equity transfer not approved by the board of directors is invalid and that third parties selling rights through SPVs or tokenized securities are "either committing fraud or offering potentially worthless products."

Both Binance and Hyperliquid's contracts are cash-settled synthetic derivatives, with no share delivery occurring—this is precisely why they can bypass transfer restrictions and achieve continuous 24-hour pricing.

Prediction Market Valuation $1.75---$2 Trillion

If perpetual contracts answer "How much is Anthropic worth?", the prediction market answers a different question: What range will its valuation ultimately fall into?

Polymarket's pricing is following up.

According to the latest data, the market bets that the cumulative probability of Anthropic's first-day closing market value falling between $1.5 trillion and $2.5 trillion is 77%, but there is significant disagreement regarding the specific range.

The probability for $1.5 to $1.75 trillion is reported at 19%, the probability for $1.75 to $2 trillion is 27%, the probability for $2 to $2.25 trillion is 18%, and the probability for $2.25 to $2.5 trillion is 13%.

The $1.75-$2 trillion range has a 27% probability, becoming the mode, while the cumulative probability of "not less than $2 trillion" has decreased from about 48% a week ago to about 40%. The expected value of the entire distribution is approximately $1.92 trillion, which almost coincides with the on-chain perpetual contract quotes—both markets are mutually validating and pointing to the same conclusion: they are both nearly 30% more expensive than the $1.5 trillion inquiry price.

The differences in settlement rules create price discrepancies within the prediction market as well as between prediction markets. Kalshi uses "announcement of IPO" as the settlement condition, with its "announced before November" contract jumping from 4.7% on September 28 to 16% on September 30; Polymarket requires "actual listing and open trading," with a stricter threshold. The systematic deviations in quotes indicate a fact: in the prediction market, the settlement rules themselves are the pricing power.

Accurately Predicted SpaceX's IPO Price Range

In June of this year, SpaceX's IPO tested the accuracy of perpetual contracts and prediction markets.

On the eve of the pricing date, Binance and Hyperliquid's contracts quoted about $165, a premium of about 22% over the $135 issue price, while Polymarket traders gave an 84% probability of the first-day closing market value exceeding $1.8 trillion and a 69% probability of exceeding $2 trillion.

The next day, SpaceX opened at about $150 and closed at $160.95, up 19.2% from the issue price, with a closing market value of $2.1 trillion—perpetual contract quotes were only about 2.5% higher than the first-day closing price, and both market value thresholds bet by Polymarket were fully realized.

The SpaceX round also tested the flaws of this system.

The actual equity disclosed in S-1A was 10% more than estimated, Binance chose to adjust the contract value by 1.1 times, OKX preemptively made a 12.52 times adjustment, while Trade.xyz refused to adjust—three sets of rules provided quotes that differed by up to 10% at the same time, creating arbitrage windows across exchanges and causing high-leverage long positions on platforms adhering to old standards to directly liquidate.

Throughout the issuance cycle, SpaceX Pre-IPO derivatives traded over several billion dollars cumulatively.

The lessons learned from this round became clearer: perpetual contracts excel at pricing "first-day closing," while prediction markets excel at pricing "thresholds and distributions."

Anthropic's IPO will constitute a second round of testing, but the questions have changed. SpaceX had oversubscribed, bolstered by Musk's popularity.

Anthropic's valuation inquiry has been adjusted down from $2 trillion to $1.5 trillion on the eve of listing, while the on-chain points remain above $1.9 trillion.

The answer may soon be revealed in the coming weeks.

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