Pump.fun Launches Pre-IPO Tokens for OpenAI and Polymarket, Driving an 8% Surge in PUMP Price

The Solana-based crypto launch platform Pump.fun has launched tokens that track private companies with strong growth potential before they go public.

The list includes OpenAI, Anthropic, Polymarket, Kalshi, and Neuralink.

Following this launch, PUMP rose 8%. However, these pre-IPO tokens are still new and can experience large price swings.

Pump.fun has officially launched tokens that track the market value and market sentiment of major companies before their initial public offerings (IPOs), when they first sell shares to the public.

The new feature is powered by @PreStocks. At first, it includes pre-IPO assets paired with meme coins. Before this change, users needed SOL or USDC as the base asset when creating meme coins on the platform. With the new stock-related feature, meme coins can instead use specific pre-IPO tracking tokens as their base assets. Pump.fun calls these combinations “Custom Pairs.”

The launch includes eight companies in the following groups:

• AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic.
• Prediction market companies, including Polymarket and Kalshi. These companies run markets where people trade based on the possible outcomes of future events.
• Figure AI, a robotics company that develops humanoid robots designed to work on their own and perform many different tasks.
• Neuralink, another company owned by Elon Musk.
• Anduril, a defense technology company that makes autonomous military weapons.
• Oura, a health company that makes a smart ring for tracking body measurements.

This launch helped push Pump.fun's PUMP token up 8.41% over the past 24 hours, reaching $0.004475.

The price rise is linked to the new Custom Pair tokens. Trading these tokens will generate fees for the Pump.fun ecosystem, helping fund its system for buying back and burning PUMP tokens.

By the end of October, the system had permanently burned 17.2% of the token's fixed supply. This reduction in supply, along with growing demand and progress on the project, has increased the token's value.

One important risk is that these synthetic assets can reach extremely high stated values, such as trillions of dollars, even when the platform's total assets are much smaller. This can create a large gap between the stated value and the actual assets available.

These tokens are also currently unavailable to U.S. citizens because they are classified as synthetic derivatives. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently banned this type of asset as part of its decision to grant a five-year exemption for innovation involving tokenized stocks.

Outside the United States, users say the 3% to 5% fee on pre-IPO tokens is a major cost for people who trade frequently over short periods.

Critics have also spoken out. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Curve founder Michael Egorov previously criticized Pump.fun, the Solana-based launch platform, comparing it to a gambling den or casino.

On X, community members have questioned the platform's liquidity and legal status, while others are eager to take part.