A new wave of exchange-traded products in the United States and Europe is giving investors a way to gain financial exposure to private AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic before they go public.
Two products launched this month use derivatives linked to crypto perpetual futures to track the companies’ implied valuations. Investors can gain exposure to their price movements without owning shares in either company.
The approach brings crypto-market pricing into traditional investment products, but the reference prices do not necessarily reflect what investors would pay to buy shares in private transactions.
The Pre-IPO Access Gap and the Role of Crypto Derivatives
Investing in private companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic has traditionally been difficult for ordinary investors. Access to shares is often limited, while buying or selling them on secondary markets can be challenging.
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Crypto derivatives offer a different way to gain financial exposure to these companies before they go public. Rather than buying private shares, investors can use exchange-traded products that link their returns to derivative prices associated with the companies’ implied valuations.
Crypto exchanges such as Binance provide markets for perpetual futures contracts linked to these companies’ implied valuations. Financial firms such as FalconX can help structure the transactions that connect derivative prices to investment products.
However, these contracts do not establish the price at which private shares could actually be bought or sold. Their prices reflect trading activity and market expectations, which can differ from valuations implied by private funding rounds or secondary-market transactions.
Wall Street Meets Crypto: Key Product Launches
The market movement materialized in October through several landmark regulatory filings and fund listings across global exchanges.
In early October, Corgi MANGOS ETF (MN) began trading on the Cboe BZX Exchange. This actively managed fund holds blue-chip mega-cap tech equities (including Meta, Nvidia, and Alphabet) alongside cash-settled total return swaps. These swaps provide synthetic economic exposure to OpenAI and Anthropic, using underlying crypto perpetual reference rates.
Soon after, 21Shares Anthropic Synthetic ETP (CLAU) launched on the Vienna MTF, offering unleveraged exposure to Anthropic’s pre-IPO market valuation. Managed via debt notes, the ETP references a Kaiko benchmark index derived from Binance perpetual futures.
Pushing the boundary further, Tuttle Capital filed registration documents on October 26 for six leveraged derivative ETFs targeting high-profile private entities—including SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic—seeking twice the daily performance of an underlying synthetic basket.
Risks: Synthetic Exposure, Not Actual Shares
While these instruments democratize access to pre-IPO price momentum, they come with risks.
Investors do not own shares in OpenAI or Anthropic and have no shareholder voting rights. Perpetual contracts reflect speculative market sentiment rather than verified primary capital raises. Prices based on perpetual futures may also diverge from the value implied by private funding rounds, particularly when trading is thin.
The products can also incur funding costs and expose investors to the risk that the other party fails to meet its obligations, which may affect returns over time.
What It Means for the Future of Financial Markets
The use of crypto derivatives in mainstream investment products could create new ways for investors to gain exposure to private companies before they go public. If these synthetic pre-IPO products can reliably track private-company valuations and attract enough trading activity, they could change how investors access private markets before companies go public.
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