Access Before the Listing
OKX offers Pre-IPO X-Perps on the two hottest private companies in the world: Anthropic and OpenAI, now live for EEA users. Privately valued at USD 965 billion and USD 852 billion respectively [1], they each enjoy higher valuations than many publicly listed entities and are household names. Many have an opinion about the future value of these companies; until recently, very few could action a point of view.
We previously covered why private markets stay closed to most investors, and why the pool of companies choosing to stay private keeps growing. That argument carries through here: Companies are staying private for longer and building more value while they do it, out of reach of most investors until the day they list, if they ever do. Last week was about what markets you can reach. This week is about what you can express an opinion on, even before you're allowed to own it.
A market for pre-IPO shares already exists, but it isn't built for retail. The global secondary market for private company shares crossed roughly USD 120 billion in transaction volume in 2025 [2]. Forge Global, the largest dedicated marketplace for private company shares, requires a USD 100,000 typical minimum investment and charges a 5% fee [3]. Pricing on it is also inconsistent: shares in Cerebras, while still private, were quoted at USD 36.72 on Forge's own index, and traded between USD 39 and USD 57 on EquityZen over the same period, against a last priced funding round of USD 14.66 [4] — a 2.5-4x spread depending on which platform an investor checked. The existing venue for pre-IPO shares is exclusive by minimum size and inconsistent by pricing; it was never built as a retail on-ramp.
The idea of a pre-IPO futures contract is in itself an innovation: only two of the 183 pre-IPO companies tracked on one industry database have a futures contract anywhere [5]. A futures contract needs a continuous, crowd-legible price signal, and almost no private company discloses valuation data often or publicly enough to support one. OpenAI and Anthropic are the exception because their funding rounds are frequent, huge and heavily reported. Not many companies can meet these criteria: only two other companies have previously carried a pre-IPO futures contract, and both converted cleanly into standard listed contracts once they IPO'd — one of them, as we mentioned in a previous post, on OKX itself: a pre-IPO futures contract that rolled straight into a standard listed X-Perp at IPO, same account, no migration required.
Pre-IPO X-Perps are cash-settled derivatives working on an implied valuation. They are not equity: they offer no voting rights or claim on the company, no dividend, and offer no long-term upside if the company compounds in value for a decade. The price is market derived, set by supply and demand on OKX via a funding rate. This can diverge materially from the last private funding round or from the eventual IPO price. Positions rebase at an IPO-related share-count event. That means X-Perps express a view on price direction, not a stake in the company's future. They aren't a free-for-all either: leveraged derivatives carry their own eligibility bar.
The distinction between an X-Perp style derivative contract and an equity is worth making explicitly, because it hasn't always been made cleanly. In July 2025, OpenAI publicly stated that tokens issued by another platform and marketed to EU users as exposure to the company were "not OpenAI equity," and that it had not approved any transfer of its equity [6]. It's a useful illustration of why a plainly-labelled derivative — one that never claims to be equity in the first place — is a cleaner structure than a token dressed up as equity exposure.
That novelty cuts both ways. On one September snapshot, Anthropic's contracts traded at an average 100.5% premium to its last priced funding round across 19 venues — implying a valuation of roughly USD 1.94 trillion against its actual USD 965 billion [5]. That's a signal of appetite, not an agreed price. The instrument is also still finding its footing structurally: at least one earlier on-chain market for these contracts wound down entirely in 2026, settling all open positions rather than carrying them through to an eventual listing. A structure that has to fully close out positions instead of converting them at IPO is a less durable design than one built to carry a position through the listing itself [7].
Tokenized Stocks are a complementary, public-market access point for companies once they're listed — not a substitute for Pre-IPO X-Perps or vice versa. OKX's version is 1:1 backed by real shares held in custody; the two products are built for different purposes and shouldn't be read as versions of each other.
The broader tokenization backdrop keeps moving, too. Tokenized stocks reached a USD 3.1 billion on-chain market capitalization in early September 2026, according to Token Terminal, up from roughly USD 2-2.5 billion in mid-July and under USD 1 billion at the start of the year [8]. OKX's Token Terminal Report expands on this data in more depth.
Total RWA market capitalization, excluding stablecoins, stood at USD 38.29 billion as of 13 August 2026 [9] — a similar order of magnitude to where the market stood a week earlier, and still a small fraction of where most forecasts expect the category to land by the early 2030s.
OpenAI and Anthropic are still private, still growing, and still gated from broad-based. Those rules haven't changed — but what you can now do prior to public listing has.
References
[1] CNBC, "Anthropic's valuation surges to $965 billion," 28 May 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/28/anthropic-open-ai-startup-value.html; OpenAI, "Accelerating the next phase of AI," 31 March 2026. https://openai.com/index/accelerating-the-next-phase-ai/
[2] Industry Ventures secondary market sizing research, via Angel Investors Network, 2026. https://angelinvestorsnetwork.com/angel-investing/pre-ipo-investing-forge-equityzen-secondary-market-2026
[3] Forge Global company data, 2026. https://www.peinvest.net/platforms/forge-global
[4] Cold Capital analysis, "One Company, Many Prices," via Angel Investors Network. https://angelinvestorsnetwork.com/capital-raising/forge-global-review-2026-pre-ipo-secondaries
[5] CoinGecko/DefiLlama, "Crypto Pre-IPO Trading: Anthropic & OpenAI Perps," 1 September 2026 snapshot. https://www.coingecko.com/learn/crypto-pre-ipo-trading-anthropic-openai-perps
[6] CNBC, "OpenAI says Robinhood-issued tokens are not company equity," July 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/02/openai-robinhood-tokens.html
[7] Yahoo Finance/Decrypt, June 2026. https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/ventuals-exit-costs-hyperliquid-two-203013316.html
[8] CryptoBriefing, citing Token Terminal, September 2026. https://cryptobriefing.com/tokenized-stocks-hit-3b-market-cap-etfs-644m/
[9] CoinGecko, RWA Report 2026. https://www.coingecko.com/research/publications/rwa-report-2026
Disclaimer: Whilst we strive to provide a better trading experience, trading pre-market futures is highly risky as the pre-market is more prone to lower liquidity, higher price volatility, and users are subject to increased liquidation risk. The price of pre-market futures has enhanced sensitivity to market speculation and information and you are purchasing this product at your own risk. Not all tokens being traded in pre-market futures will ultimately be listed on OKX and OKX retains sole discretion to adjust the listing, extend or terminate the futures contract and the delivery date for the futures contract. It should be noted that pre-market futures is with a set expiry, with expiry linked to the listing of the relevant underlying token and settled at expiry in USDT only, therefore you are not trading in the underlying token nor should you have any expectation to receive the underlying token at expiry of the futures contract. In addition, there are no clearly identifiable price sources for the underlying token given trading is pre-listing of the relevant token and, as a result, price of the futures contracts may differ to price of the underlying token at listing and once listed. OKX may suspend such trading pre-market futures at any time and at its sole discretion. For more details, please refer to the OKX Terms of Service and Risk & Compliance Disclosure.
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