Anthropic’s pre-IPO perp closes at $103.93, 33% above its filed range

Anthropic told regulators its shares should price between $70 and $78. Crypto traders took one look and offered a lot more.

A pre-IPO perpetual futures contract tracking the Claude developer’s stock closed at $103.93, about 33% above the top of the filed range. The exact gap works out to a 33.2% premium over the $78 ceiling.

What the filing says versus what traders say

Anthropic submitted an amended S-1 registration statement on November 10, 2026. The document laid out an expected range of $70 to $78 per Class A share.

The company plans to offer 825 million shares in total. At the high end of that range, the post-offering valuation could land close to $1 trillion.

One day later, the derivatives market delivered its own verdict. On November 11, the contract, listed under the ticker xyz:ANT, was marked at $103.93.

Trade.xyz deployed xyz:ANT on the Hyperliquid blockchain.

The contract logged approximately $109 million in 24-hour trading volume. Open interest, meaning the total value of positions still open and unsettled, sat between $105.6 million and $108 million.

How do you trade a stock that doesn’t exist yet

Technically, xyz:ANT offers synthetic exposure to the expected value of one Anthropic Class A share after the IPO. No actual shares change hands at any point.

The contract settles in USDC, the dollar-pegged stablecoin. Profits and losses move in digital dollars, not equity.

It is also a perpetual future, which means it has no fixed expiry date the way a traditional futures contract does. Positions can stay open as long as the trader keeps them funded.

Traders can use up to 10x leverage.

The pre-IPO structure only runs until the expected public listing. At that point, the contract converts into a standard equity perpetual that tracks the actual traded stock.

A familiar number from the private markets

During Anthropic’s Series H round in May 2026, valuations peaked at $965 billion.

xyz:ANT also isn’t alone. Pre-IPO perpetuals across various venues point to open interest in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and these markets often value companies above the midpoint of their IPO ranges.

What this means for traders and the IPO

The most obvious read is demand. A 33.2% premium over the ceiling suggests at least one group of market participants expects Anthropic to trade well above where its bankers currently plan to price it.

That signal comes with caveats, though. The perp market is a leveraged, crypto-native crowd trading a synthetic product, not the institutional order book that ultimately sets an IPO price.

Leverage is the biggest risk to watch. With positions running up to 10x, a gap between the final IPO price and where the perp trades could trigger sharp swings as overextended traders get squeezed out.

The next checkpoint is the finalization of IPO terms, expected around November 18, with a trading debut anticipated shortly after.