Kraken puts OpenAI and Anthropic valuations on the trading screen
Kraken has brought its pre-IPO perpetual futures tied to OpenAI and Anthropic back into the spotlight, re-promoting the Anthropic contract on Sept. 6 months after both products were first announced in June. The contracts, traded under the symbols PF_ANTHROPICXUSD and PF_OPENAIXUSD, give eligible traders leveraged exposure to the private-market valuations of two of the most valuable artificial intelligence companies in the world, without either company completing a public listing.
The products are cash-settled, support long and short positions, carry no expiration date and offer leverage of up to five times. Kraken says traders can use multi-collateral margin, meaning several supported assets can be posted as collateral, subject to the exchange’s haircuts and risk rules. The company has been explicit about one point: neither contract represents shares issued by OpenAI or Anthropic, and Kraken claims no affiliation with, endorsement from or sponsorship by either firm.
Exposure without ownership
Buying an Anthropic or OpenAI contract does not place the customer on either company’s shareholder register. Contract holders receive no voting rights, no dividends, no information rights and no access to a future public offering. They also hold no claim on the assets of either company.
Instead, the contracts settle in US dollars through Kraken’s multi-collateral derivatives account. The exchange frames the products as tools for taking directional positions on private-company valuations or for hedging other exposure. That hedging use case comes with a caveat: private-company shares do not trade continuously on a public exchange. Transactions happen through private secondary markets at different prices and under varying transfer restrictions, so the futures can move differently from any particular private shareholding.
A synthetic index replaces a stock price
Normal equity futures can anchor to an exchange-traded share price. Kraken cannot do that for companies with no public stock, so it built the Kraken PreMarket Synthetic index, which draws its value from activity in the perpetual market itself rather than from an independent reference.
The index is exponentially smoothed, which reduces the influence of short-lived order-book movements and makes the reference value adjust gradually. On top of that, mark prices are clamped within a band of 0.25 percent above or below the synthetic index, a mechanism Kraken says is designed to limit liquidations caused by momentary spikes in a thin market.
That protection does not eliminate valuation risk. If participants collectively misprice a private company, the synthetic index will reflect that view, because no liquid spot market exists to correct the contract through ordinary arbitrage. Spreads can also be wider than in mature equity or crypto futures, making it more expensive to open or close positions during volatile periods. Anthropic-linked futures on other platforms previously fell as much as 9 percent after additional exchange listings, a reminder of how sharply these products can move without a public reference price.
Leverage steps down as size grows
Both contracts offer a base maximum leverage of 5x, which means 20 percent initial margin, with base maintenance margin set at 10 percent. Leverage decreases for larger positions, stepping down from 5x to roughly 3.3x and then 2x as exposure increases. Funding payments are realized every hour, and Kraken describes funding as structurally minimal during the pre-IPO period because the mark price stays inside the narrow band around the index. That is a company assessment, not a guaranteed funding cost.
The products also carry auto-deleveraging risk: profitable positions may be reduced when the exchange cannot close a liquidated counterparty’s position through the order book. Kraken warns that customers can lose their entire margin, and its disclosure notes that leveraged losses can exceed the initial deposit depending on market conditions and account arrangements.
Most of the world’s retail traders are excluded
The geographic footprint is narrow. The Anthropic and OpenAI perpetuals are unavailable in the United States, the European Economic Area, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and only professional clients can access them in the United Kingdom. The products are offered by Payward Digital Solutions from Bermuda, which is licensed to conduct digital asset business by the Bermuda Monetary Authority.
The exclusions are striking given that both referenced companies are American. The contracts sit outside Kraken’s regulated US derivatives business, and their growth has raised questions about whether private-company derivatives deserve a dedicated regulatory framework, since they combine leveraged crypto-market trading with valuations of companies whose financial disclosures are far thinner than those of listed issuers. An industry request has already asked the SEC to establish rules for pre-IPO perpetuals and consider eventual US market access, though any domestic launch would require approval and a structure complying with US derivatives and securities laws.
Kraken is not alone in this market. Coinbase added private-company perpetuals tied to OpenAI and Anthropic for eligible users outside the US, while Hyperliquid and several specialized platforms have offered synthetic exposure to companies approaching public listings.
An IPO rewrites the rulebook
Kraken plans to convert the contracts if either company completes an IPO, replacing the synthetic reference with an index based on the relevant company’s xStocks tokenized equity product. Initial margin, maintenance margin, position limits and funding rules are all expected to change, with conversion details disclosed before implementation.
The conversion is conditional. Neither contract guarantees an IPO will happen, and holding futures provides no allocation in any offering. If a listing does not occur or reliable pricing cannot be obtained, Kraken reserves the right to delist and settle the affected contract. A pre-IPO contract’s final synthetic price can also differ materially from the eventual listing price, a gap that produced rapid gains, losses and liquidations during the SpaceX listing episode, when synthetic contracts converged toward the public share price only as the IPO supplied a verifiable reference.
For now, the products remain synthetic bets on sentiment around two private giants, a market that keeps growing ahead of the rules that will eventually govern it.
Market snapshot at press time: Bitcoin trades near 79,734 USD, down 0.4 percent over 24 hours, while Ethereum changes hands around 2,491 USD and Solana near 106 USD, per CoinGecko data.
no voting rights, no dividends, no claim, 5x leverage. its a bet on a number kraken itself admits it cannot verify. peak 2026 product design
5x leverage on companies that havent even ipo’d yet. this is degens all the way down
the disclaimer that kraken has zero affiliation with openai kinda says it all. youre betting on a vibes based index of a private valuation
5x leverage on companies that are not even public yet. crypto really looked at private markets and said we can make this worse
At least Kraken is upfront about it. No voting rights, no dividends, no claim on assets. It is a pure valuation bet on paper.
PF_ANTHROPICXUSD tracking a private valuation that nobody outside the round can verify. fun product, weird price discovery
trading PF_OPENAIXUSD with no expiry beats chasing secondary shares at absurd markups if you just want directional exposure tbh
wait until the mark gaps 30% overnight on one funding round lol. good luck holding that through a down round
otto_basis nailed it below, the gap aint overnight it is instant. perp trades continuous so you are liquidated before the new round is even announced publicly
funding rounds are quarterly marks on illiquid caps, the perp trades continuously. when the gap comes it wont be overnight, it will be instant