OKX Brings Pre-IPO Bets on OpenAI and Anthropic to Europe
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Crypto exchange OKX has just opened two new product categories to European customers: pre-IPO markets on companies that have yet to list, and tokenized stocks. The pre-IPO lineup starts with the two most closely watched AI companies in the sector, OpenAI and Anthropic.
The instruments are so-called X-Perps, perpetual futures without an expiry date, which let traders take long or short positions on the implied valuations of both companies with leverage of up to 10x. Positions can be opened and closed at any time, according to the exchange, and further pre-IPO markets are set to follow. The products are offered through OKX Europe Markets Ltd., licensed by the Malta Financial Services Authority under the country’s Investment Services Act.
100 Tokenized Stocks, Trading Around the Clock
Alongside them, OKX is launching tokenized stocks with roughly 100 markets, including SpaceX, Google, Nvidia and Palantir, plus the SPY and QQQ ETFs. They trade 24/7, can be posted as collateral for X-Perps and used inside DCA and grid bots, and can be withdrawn on-chain to a self-custody wallet. Here too, the tokens track the price of the underlying security while leaving ownership and voting rights with the actual shareholders.
“Pre-IPO markets have been unavailable for most European traders on traditional brokerage and other regulated platforms,” says Erald Ghoos, CEO of OKX Europe. X-Perps volume in Europe has quadrupled since the MiCA transition period ended in July, he says, and the new markets are built for that same audience.
Familiar Territory for the Market
What sets this launch apart is its regulatory packaging: the underlying idea has been circulating for months. Crypto exchanges have been trading synthetic contracts on OpenAI and Anthropic for some time. Binance and Hyperliquid list Anthropic perpetuals, the Solana-based platform PreStocks issues its own tokens, and Kraken and Coinbase have launched pre-IPO perps for eligible customers outside the US, with Kraken so far excluding the EU.
Tokenized shares in private companies also have a European history. Robinhood rolled out tokens on OpenAI and SpaceX last summer, launching in the EU ahead of the US. The offering drew immediate pushback. OpenAI stated publicly at the time that “these ‘OpenAI tokens’ are not OpenAI equity,” that it had no partnership with the neobroker, and that any transfer of its shares requires the company’s explicit approval. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev subsequently conceded that the instruments were “technically not equity.” Lithuania’s central bank, the responsible supervisor, went on to examine the product.
What Buyers Actually Get
The key point sits in OKX’s own risk disclosures: pre-IPO X-Perps confer no ownership and no economic claim in the referenced company. Their price may differ materially from private valuations or from any eventual IPO price, and a listing may be delayed, cancelled, or never happen at all. Company names imply no affiliation or endorsement. In practice, these are derivatives written on a reference value, and the cap table stays where it is.
When the Reference Value Takes Off
The Anthropic case shows how far that reference value can drift from observable pricing. Perpetuals on Binance and Hyperliquid recently implied a valuation of around $1.93 trillion, while PreStocks came in at roughly $1.41 trillion. The company’s most recent Series H round valued it at $965 billion. Absent a listed underlying, the price of such contracts tracks little more than the expectations of the traders setting it.
That leaves one open question for the European market: whether supervisors will assess a MiCA- and MiFID-compliant construction differently from the tokenized instruments that stirred debate roughly a year ago. Leverage of up to 10x on a valuation no regulated market has validated seems unlikely to settle the argument.
