Anthropic Has No Stock, But Crypto Markets Price It at $2 Trillion

TLDR

• Crypto perpetual contracts implied a $2.12 trillion valuation for the private AI company Anthropic on September 9.
• Binance’s ANTHROPIC/USDT contract uses an assumed 1 billion share count to calculate that figure.
• Anthropic’s last private funding round, closed in May, valued the company at $965 billion.
• Anthropic has warned that unauthorized investment structures, including SPVs, may leave investors with nothing.
• OpenAI’s pre-IPO contracts implied a valuation near $1.58 trillion on the same day.

Anthropic has no public stock. It hasn’t filed for an IPO. Yet on September 9, crypto traders pushed the implied value of the Claude maker past $2 trillion through a type of contract called a pre-IPO perpetual.

Data from Defillama showed Binance’s ANTHROPIC/USDT contract trading near $2,120. Binance calculates the company’s implied worth by multiplying that price by an assumed 1 billion shares outstanding.

That math produces a figure of roughly $2.12 trillion. Similar contracts on Bitget, Kraken, BingX, Aster, and Coinbase International traded in the same range.

These contracts settle in tether, not company shares. They let traders bet on where Anthropic might eventually be valued, without giving anyone actual ownership.

How the Number Compares to Reality

The $2.12 trillion figure is more than double Anthropic’s last negotiated private valuation. Investors valued the company at $965 billion after a $65 billion Series H round closed on May 28.

Prices have swung a lot since then. In late August, the same Binance contract traded between $1,600 and $1,840, implying $1.6 trillion to $1.84 trillion in value.

A separate market on Hyperliquid briefly topped $2 trillion in late August before settling near $1.97 trillion. OKX runs a similar contract using a 10 billion share assumption, which produces a lower price per unit but a similar overall company value.

None of these numbers come from Anthropic. Binance states the share estimate is informational only and not endorsed by the company.

Anthropic Pushes Back on Token Structures

A separate product called Prestocks issues an ANTHROPIC token on Solana through a special-purpose vehicle, or SPV. On September 9, the token traded between $961 and $973, with an implied valuation near $1.59 trillion.

Anthropic has objected to this setup. In May, the company said it does not allow SPVs to acquire its stock and that any transfers into one are void.

Anthropic added that tokenized securities and forward contracts tied to its shares may carry no real value. Prestocks tokens dropped between 34% and 45% after that statement.

Traders still have reasons to watch the numbers closely. Anthropic’s valuation rose from $380 billion in February to $965 billion in May.

The company’s annualized revenue run-rate was reported near $47 billion at the Series H close. That figure reportedly grew to around $65 billion by the end of July.

Bankers and investors have discussed a future listing somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion. Trading volume on these contracts remains small, with combined open interest across the largest markets only in the tens of millions of dollars.

OpenAI faces a similar situation. Its OPENAI/USDT contract traded around $1,578 on Binance on September 9, while Kraken showed a price of $1,604.

Binance says it will adjust the ANTHROPIC contract if Anthropic’s eventual S-1 filing shows a share count that differs from its estimate by 3% or more. Until Anthropic actually goes public, the $2 trillion figure remains a crypto market bet rather than a price the company has confirmed.

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