A new crypto exchange, MNX, began selling futures Tuesday on the valuations of OpenAI, Anthropic and other private AI labs, with contracts that expire at the end of 2027.
Key Points:
- MNX lists dated futures on four private AI labs, with leverage of up to three times.
- The contracts carry no recurring funding fees, unlike rival perpetual products.
- Settlement could differ from real share prices if a company stays private.
OpenAI, Anthropic Futures
MNX, built by former Manifold executives, launched contracts tied to OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek and Moonshot. The exchange runs on MegaETH, an Ethereum (ETH) layer-2 network, and does not yet serve U.S. customers, though it plans to obtain licenses. It also reportedly added a contract that tracks OpenAI and Anthropic revenue.
Bigger rivals OKX and Bitget already let traders wager on private AI firms without owning shares, using contracts that never expire. MNX contracts instead run until the end of 2027, carry no recurring funding fees and allow leverage of up to three times.
Prices come from trading on MNX, not an outside feed. If a company is still private at expiry, the exchange will settle using public valuations from funding rounds, investment funds or secondary markets. As a last resort, MNX can set the price itself under a published review process.
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Stephen Grugett On Pricing
Manifold co-founder Stephen Grugett said dated contracts suit OpenAI and Anthropic better because their shares rarely trade and are hard to value. "A perp based on an illiquid, stale price is worse than meaningless," he said, adding that such products invite manipulation and can carry unpredictable funding rates.
The fallback rules still leave traders exposed.
A contract settled on a private valuation could close at a price that differs from what investors would pay for real shares, and leverage magnifies both gains and losses. Max Killberg of Village Global said AI is driving one of the largest investment cycles in history, even as the financial infrastructure around it remains underdeveloped.
MNX Funding History
The launch comes four months after MNX closed a $6.4 million pre-seed round led by Village Global, which Grugett said valued the company at $40 million.
At the time, the exchange was in private beta with institutional partners on a MegaETH test network, and it planned to add compute, equity and prediction markets later. Grugett said then that liquidity remained the biggest challenge facing any new exchange.
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