$2 Trillion Valuation for Private AI Firm Anthropic Sparks Synthetic Price Discovery Experiment

Crypto traders are assigning a valuation of over $2 trillion to private AI firm Anthropic, more than double its last negotiated private price of $965 billion in May. This figure is generated by leveraged perpetual contracts on major crypto exchanges like Binance and Kraken, which settle in stablecoins rather than company stock.

The contracts allow speculators to bet on where Anthropic might eventually trade without granting any actual ownership. On September 9, the ANTHROPIC/USDT perpetual on Binance reached $2,120, implying a valuation of $2.12 trillion based on an assumption of one billion shares outstanding.

A separate product called PreStocks issues an ANTHROPIC token on the Solana blockchain through a special-purpose vehicle (SPV). On September 9, that token traded between $961 and $973, implying a valuation near $1.59 trillion, which is dramatically above Anthropic's last negotiated private price.

However, trading volume in these synthetic markets remains modest, with combined open interest across the largest Anthropic perpetual markets totaling only tens of millions of dollars.