Pre-IPO futures on AI firms: how settlement risk works

A new crypto exchange called MNX has started offering futures tied to OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek and Moonshot, companies whose shares are not listed on any stock market, CoinDesk reported. The contracts let traders take a view on what these firms are worth without owning a single share. This article looks at how such a contract is priced, how it ends, and where a retail trader can lose money.

What happened

According to CoinDesk, MNX went live on Tuesday. It was built by former Manifold executives and runs on the MegaETH blockchain. In June the project raised $6.4 million in a round led by Village Global.

MNX is not the first venue in this niche. CoinDesk noted that larger exchanges, including OKX and Bitget, already list contracts on private AI company values. The difference is in the design. Bitget uses perpetual futures, which never expire. OKX also has no end date but uses a different funding set-up. MNX contracts instead expire at the end of 2027 and charge no recurring funding fees.

Max Killberg of Village Global said the firm wants to build financial markets around AI, rather than back one more prediction market.

The mechanics: a bet on a number nobody quotes every day

A futures contract is an agreement to settle the difference between today's agreed price and a final price on a set date. With a listed stock, that final price is easy: it is the price on the exchange. A private company has no such price. Its shares change hands rarely, in private deals, and the terms are often not public.

That is the problem the MNX founders say they are trying to solve. CoinDesk quoted Stephen Gruggett, a co-founder of Manifold Markets, saying plainly: "OpenAI, Anthropic secondaries are illiquid and hard to price." He argued that a perpetual contract pegged to thin, stale secondary prices can behave in ways traders do not expect, can be manipulated and can carry erratic funding costs. Funding is the regular payment between long and short traders that keeps a perpetual close to its reference price.

MNX takes a different route. Prices on the platform come from trading on MNX itself, not from an outside price feed. So until expiry, the contract is worth whatever buyers and sellers on that one venue agree. At expiry, if the company is still private, MNX settles using published valuations drawn from fundraising rounds, fund holdings or secondary trading. As a last resort, the exchange can set the settlement price itself, under a review process it publishes.

Leverage sits on top of all this. On MNX, a trader can open positions worth up to three times the money in the account. Leverage means a position larger than your deposit, so a given move in the contract price has a bigger effect on your account, in both directions.

Where the risk is

Dated contracts remove the funding drip of perpetuals, but they do not remove price risk. Several risks are specific to this kind of product.

• Settlement gap: CoinDesk pointed out that the final settlement price could differ from what a buyer would actually pay for the shares in a private deal. Being right about the company is not the same as being right about the settlement number.
• Thin markets: because prices are set only by trading on one venue, a few large orders can move the price sharply. Wide spreads and slippage can eat into a position before the company itself changes at all.
• Leverage and forced closing: with up to three times leverage, a sharp move against you can wipe out a large part of your margin. If your margin runs low, the platform can close the position at a loss before expiry.
• Platform and legal risk: the exchange is new and does not serve U.S. customers yet. Your money depends on a young operator, its rules and, for the last-resort price, its own judgment.

These risks sit in the contract terms, not in the headline idea.

What a retail trader should check before trading

Before putting money into a contract like this, it helps to answer a few plain questions. Which sources will decide the settlement price, and in what order? How is a company treated if it lists on a stock market before the contract ends, or never lists at all? At what margin level does the platform close positions? Who reviews a price the exchange sets itself, and can traders see that review?

It is also worth checking where the platform is licensed. Gruggett said MNX intends to obtain the licences it needs to serve U.S. customers. Until a venue is licensed where you live, the usual protections for retail traders may not apply.

What to watch

Three things will show how this product behaves in practice: how much trading the contracts attract, how closely MNX prices track the private valuations that emerge from new funding rounds, and whether the exchange ever has to use its last-resort pricing power. The expiry at the end of 2027 is the point when all three are tested at once.

Sources

• CoinDesk, 13 Oct 2026

Drafted with an AI model using only the sources listed, and released automatically after software checks on figures and originality. Nobody edited it by hand. For learning only; it does not tell you what to buy or sell.