MNX, a cryptocurrency exchange developed by Manifold Markets, went live on Tuesday offering futures contracts tied to OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek and Moonshot. According to reports from CoinDesk, the platform was built on MegaETH blockchain and raised $6.4 million from investors led by Village Global in June. The exchange allows traders to use up to three times their available funds, increasing both potential profits and losses significantly.
Unlike competing perpetual futures, MNX's contracts expire at the end of 2027 and carry no recurring funding fees, as reported by CoinDesk. The settlement prices may differ from the prices investors would pay for private shares, as prices are determined by trading activity on MNX rather than an external price feed. If a company remains private when its contract expires, the exchange uses publicly available valuations from funding rounds, investment funds or secondary markets as a last resort.
Anthropic is conducting a pre-IPO gathering at its San Francisco headquarters on October 14, asking investors to hear a $2 trillion pitch before the public sees a single page of the prospectus. The company has set a valuation prospective buyers have pegged between $1.8 trillion and $2 trillion, roughly twice the $965 billion post-money mark the company set at its Series H in May. According to Reuters, leaked prospectus data reveals 2025 revenue of about $4.6 billion, up roughly twelvefold, against a net loss of about $42 billion the same year, with $518 billion in compute commitments already signed.
Larger crypto exchanges, including OKX and Bitget, already offer contracts that let traders bet on the value of private AI companies without owning their shares. According to CoinDesk, OKX offers contracts with no expiration dates but uses a different funding mechanism, while Bitget's perpetual futures never expire. Manifold Markets co-founder Stephen Gruggett told CoinDesk that MNX's approach is better suited to private companies whose shares trade infrequently and are difficult to price.
The investment represents a bet that financial markets have yet to catch up with the enormous amounts of money flowing into artificial intelligence, according to Village Global. As reported by CoinDesk, Max Killberg of Village Global stated that "AI is driving one of the largest investment cycles in history, despite the financial infrastructure around it remaining quite underdeveloped." The largest U.S. hyperscalers are expected to spend at least $800 billion this year and more than $1 trillion the next, according to Bitcoin Suisse's Crypto Wealth Management Report 2026.
