Anthropic is not yet public, but the crypto market pushes its valuation to $2 trillion

Numbers and Reality: AI giant Anthropic's valuation myth

On September 9, 2024, perpetual contracts in the cryptocurrency market pushed the implicit valuation of private artificial intelligence company Anthropic (developer of Claude) to US$2.12 trillion. However, this figure is significantly different from the company's actual financial situation and has sparked controversy over the compliance of financial derivatives.

Contract Mechanism and Valuation Logic

Binance's ANTHROPIC/USDT Perpetual Contract assumes that the company has 1 billion outstanding shares when calculating the implied value. Based on this assumption, when the contract price approaches $2,120, the total valuation of the company is approximately $2.12 trillion. Similar contracts exist on platforms such as Bitget, Kraken, BingX, Aster and Coinbase International, with roughly the same trading range.

What needs to be clear is that these contracts are settled in Tether, not company shares. They allow traders to speculate on a possible future listing valuation of Anthropic, but do not give anyone actual equity ownership. Currently, Anthropic has no publicly traded shares and has not filed for an initial public offering (IPO).

Real valuations and market volatility

The implied valuation of US$2.12 trillion far exceeds the private financing valuation Anthropic previously negotiated. In the $65 billion Series H round that closed on May 28, investors valued the company at $965 billion. Since then, market prices have fluctuated sharply:

• In late August, the same Binance contract was trading at a price ranging from $1,600 to $1,840, with a corresponding implicit valuation of $1.6 trillion to $1.84 trillion.
• The independent market on Hyperliquid briefly exceeded US$2 trillion at the end of August, and then stabilized at around US$1.97 trillion.
• OKX runs a similar contract, but it assumes 10 billion shares outstanding, resulting in a lower single share price but a similar range of overall company valuations.

Binance stated that the share estimates it uses are for reference only and do not represent the company's official position. None of these data comes from Anthropic itself.

Company's opposition to token structure

Another product called Prestocks issues ANTHROPIC tokens on the Solana blockchain via a special purpose vehicle (SPV). On September 9, the token traded at a price ranging from $961 to $973, with an implied valuation of approximately $1.59 trillion.

Anthropic strongly opposes such structures. The company issued a statement in May stating that SPV was not allowed to acquire its shares and that any transfer of shares transferred to SPV would be invalid. In addition, the company warned that tokenized securities and forward contracts linked to its shares may not have real value. Affected by this announcement, the Prestocks token price subsequently fell by 34% to 45%.

Fundamentals and future outlook

Despite controversy, traders are keeping a close eye on these indicators as Anthropic's valuation has risen sharply in the past few months:

• It was valued at US$380 billion in February and rose to US$965 billion in May.
• At the end of the Series H round, its annualized revenue operating rate was reported to be close to US$47 billion; by the end of July, that figure had reportedly grown to approximately US$65 billion.

Bankers and investors have discussed that future listings could be valued at US$1.5 trillion to US$2 trillion. Currently, the trading volume of these contracts is still small, with the total value of open interest in major markets only in the tens of millions of dollars.

Industry comparison: OpenAI's situation

OpenAI faces a similar market scenario. On September 9, its OPENAI/USDT contract was traded on Binance for approximately US$1,578, while Kraken showed a price of US$1,604.

Binance stated that if the number of shares shown in Anthropic's future S-1 filings differs by 3% or more from its estimate, the company will adjust the ANTHROPIC contract parameters. Before Anthropic actually went public, the $2 trillion valuation was just a speculative bet in the crypto market, not a price confirmed by the company.