Kraken launched pre-IPO perpetual futures tied to OpenAI and Anthropic, giving eligible traders leveraged exposure before either AI company lists publicly.
Key Points:
- Kraken’s new contracts let eligible users trade long or short exposure to OpenAI and Anthropic before any IPO.
- The products offer up to 5x leverage, which can increase both gains and liquidation risk.
- Pre-IPO perps depend on private-market pricing, liquidity and listing expectations, not continuous public spot markets.
Kraken Perps
Kraken said the new contracts are designed for traders who want exposure to two of the most closely watched private artificial intelligence companies without buying shares directly.
The products allow eligible users to take long or short positions through perpetual futures, rather than through private equity, secondary-market transactions or venture allocations that are typically limited to insiders and institutional investors. The exchange said the contracts offer up to 5x leverage.
That structure turns private-company demand into a crypto-native derivatives market. It also shows how digital asset exchanges are moving beyond coin listings and into products linked to private firms, real-world assets and other off-chain themes.
The appeal is clear. AI remains one of the strongest investment narratives in global markets, while public investors still have limited ways to trade companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic before a formal listing.
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AI Exposure
Pre-IPO perpetual futures carry different risks from standard crypto perps because the underlying companies do not trade in open, continuous spot markets.
A Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH) perpetual contract can reference deep public markets, but private-company pricing depends on funding rounds, secondary sales, internal marks and expectations for IPO timing. Those inputs can move unevenly.
That makes leverage more difficult to manage. If listing expectations change, private valuations fall or liquidity weakens, the contracts could behave very differently from a standard crypto momentum trade.
For Kraken, the launch fits a wider push into derivatives and trader-focused markets.
For users, it creates a new way to express a view on AI leaders before public listings, but it does not make private-market exposure simple.
Crypto exchanges have spent years expanding from spot token trading into perpetual futures, options and tokenized exposure to assets outside blockchain markets. Kraken’s AI-linked contracts extend that pattern into private-company speculation, where pricing is less transparent and timing risk can matter as much as direction.
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