Coinbase Lets You Trade OpenAI and Anthropic — Before Either One Even Goes Public

Coinbase has launched perpetual futures (perps) on OpenAI and Anthropic shares for non-U.S. customers — a product that offers exchange exposure to both companies before either one officially goes public, news.bitcoin.com reports.

What a "perp" actually is: a contract that tracks an asset's price with no expiration date — the trader is effectively betting on a company's future price without owning any real shares. Until now, that was something you could only do with crypto, not stakes in private tech companies.

Both companies are already deep in IPO preparations: Anthropic filed a confidential draft prospectus on June 1, 2026, and OpenAI followed exactly a week later, on June 8, Crypto Briefing notes. Combined with SpaceX, which already completed its IPO, the three companies are expected to bring more than $240 billion in new equity to market by year-end.

There's a flip side, too: analysts warn that an IPO wave of this size could pull institutional liquidity away from crypto markets that would otherwise have gone there, crypto.news reports.

What this means in practice: the line between "investing in AI" and "trading crypto" keeps blurring — now it's literally the same terminal and the same type of contract.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.