Bet on what OpenAI and Anthropic are worth: Manifold's founders open a futures exchange on private AI giants, but not for Americans

A new crypto exchange is offering traders a way to bet on the price tags of the world's most valuable private companies. MNX, built on the MegaETH Ethereum layer-2, launched on Tuesday with dated futures tied to the valuations of OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek and Moonshot, CoinDesk reported. The team behind it, led by co-founder and chief executive Stephen Grugett, previously built Manifold Markets, the play-money prediction site.

The design is the point. Rival contracts on OKX and Bitget are perpetual futures that never expire and rely on funding payments to track a reference price that, for a private company, barely exists. MNX's contracts instead run to the end of 2027, charge no recurring funding fees, and take their price from trading on MNX itself rather than an outside feed. If a company has not gone public by expiry, MNX settles on public valuations from funding rounds, investment funds or secondary markets, and as a last resort can set the settlement price itself under a published review process. "A perp based on an illiquid, stale price is worse than meaningless," Grugett told CoinDesk.

Traders can use up to three times their available funds. The exchange does not currently serve US customers; Grugett said it plans to obtain the licences it needs. It also plans markets on the wider AI economy, including company revenue, employment, housing and computing capacity.

MNX raised $6.4 million in a pre-seed round led by Village Global at a $40 million valuation, with Cambrian, North Island Ventures, Finality Capital and Relay Digital also investing, The Block reported in June. The bet behind the bet is that the AI spending boom keeps running: CoinDesk cited a Bitcoin Suisse report estimating the largest US hyperscalers will spend at least $800 billion this year and more than $1 trillion next year.