MNX Opens Pre-IPO Bets on OpenAI and Anthropic Valuations

MNX began selling futures on Tuesday on the valuations of four private AI labs: OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek and Moonshot. Each contract is quoted so that 1 point equals $1 billion of company valuation, expires on Dec. 31, 2027 at 23:59:59 UTC, and can be held at up to 3x leverage, per the exchange's contract documentation.

The design choice is the pitch. MNX lists dated contracts rather than perpetuals that never expire, and the contracts carry no recurring funding fees. 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.

3x Leverage and a 20% Trading Band

The venue's documentation sets out the mechanics. Maximum leverage is 3x, which means an initial margin of 33⅓% of notional and a maintenance margin of 16⅔%. Orders may only fill within plus or minus 20% of the oracle price, and that band is not widened around events. Standard fees are zero for makers and 20 basis points of trade value for takers.

Settlement Has Four Triggers

Each market settles on the first of four events:

• A listing event, where the company's shares begin public trading.
• An acquisition before listing.
• Dissolution or bankruptcy, which settles at 0.
• Expiry with no trigger.

The listing case sets the settlement value at the official closing price on the first trading day multiplied by the Settlement Share Count, in billions of dollars and rounded to the nearest tick. That share count is basic, not fully diluted. It covers all classes of common or ordinary stock outstanding after the listing and excludes options, warrants, RSUs and convertibles. The first trading day is the first day the primary listing exchange publishes an official closing price.

The Expiry Fallback Rests on Other People's Marks

If a company is still private when its contract expires, the price comes from outside. The top tier of the fallback is a qualifying transaction: the implied post-money valuation of the most recent completed priced funding round, tender offer or secondary sale with at least $1 billion of consideration, done within the six months before the settlement date and documented by at least two independent public sources.

Below that sit SEC-registered fund marks, taken from holdings filings such as Forms N-PORT and N-CSR, and public secondary-market platform figures such as Forge and Notice. The final tier is a price the operator determines itself. After any settlement calculation is posted, a 24-hour review window runs before positions close.

Where the Risk Sits

Before settlement, the price is set entirely by MNX's internal order book, with no external price feed. The plus or minus 20% band constrains pre-settlement fills only, so the final settlement price can land far outside the range that governed trading.

Two further features matter for a leveraged position:

• There is no insurance fund. If the collateral held by the market's perpetual contract cannot pay every registered winning claim in full, the trading fees that market has accrued are used first, and any remaining shortfall is shared pro rata across winning accounts.
• At 3x, a move of more than about 33% from an account's entry leaves it with negative equity that normal liquidation cannot intercept. The account loses its posted margin and no more, and no debt is pursued.

MNX may also wind down a market before expiry if it fails to hit desired volume thresholds, or if MNX itself is winding down.

A Revenue Contract Sits Alongside the Valuations

The venue's market list already includes a different kind of bet. LABREV is a futures contract on the combined 2027 revenue of OpenAI and Anthropic, in billions of dollars, settling on the first exchange business day on or after July 1, 2028. Settlement uses the companies' own financial statements, filings or official revenue figures first, then full-year 2027 revenue as reported by The Information, Reuters, Bloomberg, the Financial Times or The Wall Street Journal, then an MNX estimate.

Anthropic's listed contract tracks the company's market capitalization after an IPO, or its last public valuation if no listing happens before 2028.

MNX describes itself as a decentralized futures exchange focused on the AI economy, with non-custodial settlement on MegaETH, an Ethereum layer-2 network, and execution through 200ms batch auctions. The exchange does not yet serve U.S. customers, though it plans to obtain licenses. It launched four months after closing a $6.4 million pre-seed round led by Village Global, which Grugett said valued the company at $40 million.

The valuation futures settle on whatever the fallback hierarchy finds at the end of 2027: a funding round, a registered fund's filing, a secondary-market print, or a price the operator sets itself under its review process.