How prediction markets are pricing the battle between Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI

Polymarket said on Tuesday that it will let users put bets on private company events such as valuations and IPO dates.

The cryptocurrency-based platform worked with Nasdaq Private Market to verify the results of these new contracts.

With more than 1,600 unicorns totaling more than $5 trillion, private companies are incredibly wealthy today.

However, until the companies go public, ordinary investors are typically prohibited from investing.

Anthropic and OpenAI are being considered as potential future possibilities, and companies like SpaceX may soon go public.

The new prediction markets allow users to speculate on the future performance of private companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, Databricks, and Kraken.

One market is focused on Anthropic’s valuation by the end of the year, with traders now estimating an 88% possibility that the company would achieve a $1 trillion valuation by December 31.

Additional contracts suggest a 94% chance that Anthropic will be worth more than OpenAI in 2026, as well as a 69% chance that Anthropic will enter the public markets before OpenAI.

Other cryptocurrency sites are also launching similar products.

Earlier this month, TradeXYZ on Hyperliquid introduced pre-IPO futures for companies like Cerebras and SpaceX, giving traders another chance to bet on high-profile private companies before they go public.

Partnership focuses on data integrity and market resolution

Nasdaq Private Market will provide the data used to settle the wagers, based on its surveillance of private companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX, and Ripple.

Shayne Coplan, founder and CEO of Polymarket, stated that the launch provides access to a part of the financial markets that ordinary investors have long been barred from, allowing people to engage directly with the decisions that form the value of significant private companies for the first time.

The collaboration links Nasdaq Private Market’s information on private share transactions with Polymarket’s event-based trading system.

In addition to giving institutional investors a fresh measure of market sentiment to complement the current transaction data used across the financial sector, it allows consumers to speculate on verified outcomes involving private businesses.

Polymarket has continued its rapid expansion, with new markets hitting record highs every month over the past year.

In 2026 so far, users in the United States have placed about $39 billion in wagers on the platform.

The agreement, according to Tom Callahan, CEO of Nasdaq Private Market, expands access to a broader set of market participants while reinforcing the company’s focus on accurate data to ensure fair and reliable market outcomes.

SpaceX IPO could dominate market

However, the launch coincides with a challenging period for businesses preparing to go public.

The performance of new stocks varied wildly last year.

On its first day, Navan fell 20% while Figma increased 250%. At year’s end, Gemini had dropped 65%, while Circle had increased 156%.

Wall Street analysts believe SpaceX’s IPO will dominate the market and outshine rival listings.

Elon Musk’s business may shortly unveil its IPO intentions, with a target valuation of up to $1.75 trillion.

Samuel Kerr, who handles equity capital markets globally at Mergermarket, called the potential $75 billion SpaceX offering “otherworldly.”

It would considerably outperform recent IPOs such as Cerebras Systems, which was valued at almost $95 billion last week.

“There’s a possibility it could be a negative for the whole global IPO market,” Kerr told CNBC on Tuesday. The deal might “really suck all the oxygen out the room for anybody else. Everybody’s eyes are going to be on SpaceX.”

With so much money flowing into one stock, “almost nothing’s going to want to be in the market at the same time,” he added.

Salman Ahmed, the Global Head of Macro and Strategic Asset Allocation at Fidelity International, said that such large-scale listings could temporarily redirect capital away from the broader stock market.

“They’ll have to suck in a lot of capital from the system,” Ahmed said, “and that’s why I think there’s another reason we have to be careful about the winners right now, because that’s where the capital is going to be pulled from to finance these mega IPOs.”

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