ThinkMarkets opens 24/7 pre-IPO bets on Anthropic and OpenAI

ThinkMarkets said on Wednesday it had begun quoting round-the-clock contracts on what Anthropic and OpenAI will be worth at the close of their first day of trading, according to Financemagnates. The two AI names sit at opposite ends of the IPO calendar: Anthropic has filed to list, while OpenAI has said it will stay private this year.

The instruments are cash-settled contracts for difference. Clients can take either side of the price, but the contracts carry no stock and no share of any offering. A separate sponsored statement carried by Finbold described the same launch on October 28.

Also read: OpenAI forecasts $50bn revenue, $20bn below its earlier guidance

Key facts

• Each ThinkMarkets market tracks expected market capitalisation at the first-day close, with one point equal to $1 billion — a quote of 1,500 denotes a $1.5 trillion company.
• Anthropic filed its IPO paperwork on Monday and applied to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol ANT, with the SEC registration statement leaving the price range blank, Financemagnates reported.
• OpenAI, last valued at $852 billion in a round that closed on March 31, has said it will not go public this year and that tokens Robinhood sold in Europe were not its equity.
• Perpetual futures tied to Anthropic’s listing implied a value of about $1.87 trillion on Binance on October 25 and 26, Bitcoin.com reported, against the $965 billion post-money figure from its May funding round.
• Finbold, in a sponsored press release, said Anthropic is reported to be preparing for a US listing as early as November and that the contracts are available on live and demo accounts.

Market value versus a share price

Nauman Anees, co-founder and chief executive of ThinkMarkets, gave trading hours as the rationale for the product launch, saying news on these listings does not wait for an exchange to open.

Pepperstone took a different route this week: its Anthropic contract follows the price traders expect the shares to open at, around $115 on Wednesday, with pricing drawn from centralised and decentralised exchanges, and it can roll into a contract on the listed stock after the debut. Chris Weston, Pepperstone’s head of research, described the market as a live read on investor sentiment as Anthropic moves towards its listing.

Also read: OpenAI fires three safety researchers over data shared with outside AI group

Late arrival in a crowded field

ThinkMarkets is not first. Bitget opened an Anthropic perpetual in early June with leverage of up to 20 times. OKX said on May 6 it would list perpetual futures on OpenAI, SpaceX and Anthropic and later offered them to European clients, where ESMA treats perpetual futures as CFDs under retail leverage caps. On Hyperliquid, Ventuals ran OpenAI and Anthropic markets until June 15, when it shut them after more than $650 million in volume, CoinDesk reported. STARTRADER began offering OpenAI and Anthropic CFDs on June 29 with 5x leverage, and PU Prime listed the same two names around then. By Financemagnates’ count, at least six venues quoted Anthropic before ThinkMarkets did.

Forbes reported on Tuesday, citing DeFiLlama, that open Anthropic contracts across more than a dozen crypto venues were worth $134 million. The new markets sit alongside ThinkMarkets’ 24/7 gold, silver, oil and US index CFDs; at least 19 firms launched a dedicated weekend or 24/7 gold product between February 17 and October 1, according to FM Intelligence. ThinkMarkets took about 0.4% of the retail FX and CFD volume tracked in FM Intelligence’s Broker Volumes in the first half of 2026, up 12% year on year.

Why it matters

Pre-IPO exposure to private AI companies now trades in the same always-on format as crypto perps, which means retail brokers are competing directly with offshore exchanges for the same speculative flow. The contracts give traders a way to express a view on two of the largest expected listings without waiting for a float or share allocation, but they also carry CFD leverage rules and counterparty exposure rather than equity rights. The SpaceX debut in June followed a similar pattern, with CMC Markets opening a grey market around Binance’s pre-IPO perpetual.

What to watch

The next datapoints are the blank price range in Anthropic’s registration statement and the eventual first-day close, against which open contracts settle. Finbold’s report points to a US listing as early as November. None of this is financial advice, and valuations in these markets are volatile and uncertain.

Written by

Emily Torres

Emily Torres covers cryptocurrency and decentralized finance for StockPil, tracking blockchain markets and regulatory developments.

Sources: Finance Magnates, Finbold