Anthropic pre-IPO perpetual contracts imply $1.8T valuation, 88% above last funding round

Perpetual futures contracts tied to Anthropic are trading at levels that imply a valuation of roughly $1.8 trillion for the AI company. That’s an 88% premium over the $965 billion post-money valuation Anthropic secured in its Series H funding round in May 2026. The contracts, available on major crypto derivatives platforms including Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken, don’t involve any actual equity changing hands. They’re synthetic instruments, settling against oracle-fed indices rather than shares. From $380B to $1.8T in months In February 2026, the company’s Series G round pegged its value at $380 billion. Just a few months later, the Series H raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation, more than doubling the previous figure. Now the derivatives market is suggesting the company might be worth nearly twice even that number. Some markets are floating valuations as high as $2 trillion. How pre-IPO perps actually work Pre-IPO perpetual contracts allow traders to take leveraged, directional positions on a company’s expected valuation without ever touching private shares. The contracts reference an index that tracks estimated valuations, typically fed by a combination of secondary mark...