Anthropic is suddenly trading like a company that could be worth $2 trillion, even though its last official funding round valued it at $965 billion. Perpetual futures tied to the private AI startup began trading this week on Hyperliquid, a 24/7 crypto platform that excludes U.S. users, and the contract briefly climbed above $2 trillion before settling to about $1.968 trillion Friday morning. The trade is thin — turnover was only about $20 million — but it puts a live market price on one of the most closely watched names in artificial intelligence.
The move matters because it is not happening in a vacuum. Anthropic has become one of the clearest symbols of the private AI boom, where funding rounds, tokenized products and pre-IPO speculation are all racing ahead of the company’s actual public-market debut. That tension is now on display in real time: Hyperliquid’s Anthropic contract is pricing a company well above its latest funding valuation, while Binance’s own ANTHROPICUSDT pre-IPO perpetual has recently traded in a $1,600 to $1,842 range, implying a value of $1.6 trillion to $1.84 trillion using a one-billion-share benchmark.
The Hyperliquid contract uses a $1.00 point equals $100 billion valuation index model, which helps explain why the numbers can move so quickly once speculative flows hit the market. On Friday morning, the contract was still signaling roughly $1.968 trillion. That is an enormous premium to the company’s May Series H round, when Anthropic raised $65 billion at a $965 billion post-money valuation.
The gap is the story. It suggests that some traders are willing to price Anthropic as a company whose growth and AI leadership could justify a valuation far beyond its last private-mark valuation. But it also shows how far tokenized markets can drift from formal financing terms. The contract may reflect market enthusiasm, but it does not change Anthropic’s actual capital structure or the price investors paid in the company’s last funding round.
That distinction is especially important because Anthropic has already warned investors about unauthorized share transfers. In an investor-warning page quoted by CoinDesk, the company said, “We do not permit special purpose vehicles (SPVs) to acquire Anthropic stock and any transfer of shares to an SPV are void under our transfer restrictions.” It has also said unapproved sales or transfers of its stock, including via SPVs or tokenized securities, will not be recognized.
The appetite for a name like Anthropic is easy to understand. The company sits at the center of the AI arms race, where scale, model quality and enterprise demand are still being priced with very little public-market evidence. In that environment, traders are not just betting on current revenue or profits. They are wagering on whether a private company can keep compounding into a future category leader.
Still, the leap from $965 billion to nearly $2 trillion is not small. It implies that market participants are effectively assigning Anthropic a status usually reserved for the largest public companies on earth. And unlike public stocks, these tokenized and perpetual-futures products trade without the normal anchors of quarterly guidance, analyst coverage and deep institutional ownership. That can make the price action feel both exciting and detached from fundamentals.
The thin turnover adds another warning sign. A market can print a huge valuation with little actual money changing hands, especially in derivatives that are built for constant trading. In that setting, a headline number can run far ahead of the depth behind it. Traders can chase the idea of Anthropic as a $2 trillion AI champion without proving that many dollars are truly committed to that view.
Anthropic’s frenzy is also arriving alongside similar activity around other AI names. A token tied to OpenAI from Tessera Lab traded at $837 Friday, implying an $837 billion valuation. At the same time, the broader debate over whether private AI leaders can maintain extreme valuations is being pulled in another direction: competition.
Chan Ahn, CEO and CTO of Tessera Lab, told MarketWatch, “You can focus on growth, or you can focus on margin but concentrating on both at the same time is a very big ask.” Asked whether cheaper Chinese competition could derail IPO momentum, Ahn said, “That’s a possibility, yes.” The remarks highlight a central risk for the whole AI complex: the market may love the growth story, but the eventual path to profitability is still uncertain.
For Anthropic, that uncertainty matters because the company is moving closer to a public-market process. It filed a confidential draft S-1 on June 1, but has not set an IPO price, share count or timetable. MarketWatch, citing sources reported by The Information, said the company plans to launch the IPO bookrunning process after the Labor Day weekend. That keeps the company in the market’s spotlight even before the formal roadshow begins.
There is also a clear sign that big banks are circling. MarketWatch, citing Bloomberg, said Citi was added to the lead-manager roster alongside JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. That kind of lineup suggests major banks are preparing for one of the most closely followed technology offerings in years, even if the details are still confidential.
The timing matters because the token market is effectively trying to front-run that process. Traders are marking up Anthropic today, before the company has priced a public deal or even disclosed the basic terms of its listing. That can be read two ways: as proof of immense demand, or as a reminder that speculation is moving faster than the underwriting process.
There is another complication embedded in the numbers. MarketWatch’s reporting shows different run-rate references for Anthropic, while Yahoo Finance and CoinDesk cited a $47 billion run rate in May. MarketWatch also cited a roughly $65 billion current run rate. Those figures are not reconciled in the available evidence, which is exactly the problem with valuing a private AI company through fragmented market signals. The model changes, the inputs differ and the numbers can be quoted as if they are comparable when they may not be.
That does not make the token market meaningless. It does mean the price is more a statement about sentiment than certainty. A contract that pushes Anthropic above $2 trillion is not a traditional valuation opinion. It is a live bet on whether the company becomes a dominant AI platform and whether the market keeps rewarding growth over everything else.
For now, Anthropic’s tokenized trading suggests the AI trade is still alive, still aggressive and still willing to stretch beyond the company’s latest private price. But the gap between $965 billion and nearly $2 trillion is wide enough to swallow a lot of optimism. The next real checkpoint is not the token chart. It is the IPO process after Labor Day weekend, where Anthropic will have to face the market with actual disclosure, actual terms and no room for speculative shortcuts.
