Want a piece of OpenAI? Unless you’re a venture fund or an early employee, the cap table isn’t taking calls.
MNX thinks it has a workaround. The decentralized futures exchange, built by the creators of Manifold Markets, launched valuation futures on October 13, 2026, covering OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and Moonshot. Traders can now bet on where these companies’ market capitalizations end up without holding any equity.
How the contracts work
Every contract expires on December 31, 2027. If a company goes public, the contract settles mainly on its post-IPO market cap. If no listing happens before 2028, the contract falls back on the last qualifying public valuation.
Prices are set through order-book trading, where buyers and sellers post bids and offers. Ahead of settlement, MNX marks positions internally using an eight-hour EMA, or exponential moving average.
Leverage is tiered, with a maximum of 3x. That requires initial margin of 33⅓%, so a trader needs to post a third of the position’s value upfront.
Maker fees are 0%, while taker fees come in at 20 basis points on notional value. If you post an order that sits on the book, you pay nothing. If you hit someone else’s order, you pay 0.2% of the position’s full size.
No funding payments, fixed end date
MNX’s futures skip recurring funding entirely and lean on clear settlement rules instead. Traders know exactly when the contract ends and how the final number gets decided.
The research describes MNX’s offering as distinct from products at larger exchanges, mainly because it targets an asset class with thin liquidity and rare public reference points.
The beta and the backers
The October launch followed a beta phase that kicked off in September 2026. During that period, OpenAI’s futures initially marked its valuation at around $1.64 trillion. As of early September 2026, that OpenAI figure sat approximately 20% below Anthropic’s valuation at the time.
MNX was developed by Manifold Markets co-founders Stephen Grugett and Ian Philips. In June 2026, the team raised $6.4 million in a pre-seed round at a $40 million valuation.
The platform runs non-custodially on the MegaETH blockchain, meaning users keep control of their own funds rather than handing them to the exchange. Orders are matched through batch auctions, where trades are grouped and cleared together at intervals instead of one by one.
One notable restriction: MNX excludes US users at launch.
What this means for traders and the AI market
The risks are real. Thin liquidity means prices can move sharply on modest order flow, and 3x leverage amplifies those moves in both directions.
Settlement also depends on events nobody controls. Whether OpenAI or Anthropic lists before 2028 determines whether contracts settle to public market caps or to the last qualifying private valuation. Private valuations arrive infrequently and reflect negotiated deals, not continuous trading, so the fallback settlement path rests on data points that may be months old by expiry.
The research frames MNX’s approach of well-defined futures with clear settlement paths as a potentially innovative way to trade private valuations, and a possible foundation for more AI-focused financial products.
