Nasdaq Private Market

Polymarket has launched prediction markets on private company valuations and IPO timelines in partnership with Nasdaq Private Market, enabling retail and institutional traders to bet on the futures of unicorns including OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX for the first time. The move opens a $5 trillion asset class previously cordoned off from ordinary investors and establishes crypto-based event betting as a direct competitor to traditional private equity information asymmetries.

• Polymarket traders price 88% probability Anthropic reaches $1 trillion valuation by December 31, 2025
• Markets estimate 69% chance Anthropic IPOs before OpenAI, and 94% chance it will be worth more than OpenAI by 2026
• US users have wagered $39 billion on Polymarket in 2026 to date; rival platform TradeXYZ launched pre-IPO futures on Hyperliquid

• $5 trillion aggregate valuation of private companies now open to prediction market speculation
• $39 billion in US wagers placed on Polymarket so far in 2026 compared to prior year growth
• 69% market probability that Anthropic enters public markets before OpenAI, largest spread among AI firms

The cryptocurrency prediction platform Polymarket announced Tuesday it would allow users to wager on private company milestones, including valuations, IPO dates, and relative market performance.

The launch partners Polymarket’s event-based trading infrastructure with Nasdaq Private Market’s data on private share transactions, creating a verification layer designed to settle bets on outcomes like whether Anthropic will surpass $1 trillion in valuation by year-end or whether OpenAI will go public before its rival.

The move targets a $5 trillion private company universe that has historically remained accessible only to venture capitalists, secondary market traders, and institutional insiders with direct relationships to portfolio companies.

Anthropic’s $1 Trillion Valuation Draws 88% Probability in Early Market Signals

Current Polymarket contracts reveal traders heavily favoring near-term wealth creation at Anthropic, the Claude AI developer founded by former OpenAI researchers.

The platform’s core contract pricing an 88% chance that Anthropic reaches a $1 trillion valuation by December 31 reflects the market’s assessment that the company’s recent fundraising trajectory and generative AI momentum will sustain rapid upward revaluation.

That figure stands substantially above the 50% neutral baseline, suggesting participants view the valuation milestone as more likely than not within the given timeframe.

The betting structure reveals a more aggressive positioning on Anthropic’s relative performance versus OpenAI across multiple timeframes. Traders price a 94% probability that Anthropic will command higher valuation than OpenAI by 2026, a striking consensus given OpenAI’s established market position and backing from Microsoft.

This gap between the two firms, where markets see Anthropic ascending past OpenAI within roughly a year, represents the single largest divergence among contrasted AI companies on the platform.

Separately, 69% of traders estimate Anthropic will pursue an IPO before OpenAI, implying the market expects the younger firm to reach public markets first despite OpenAI’s longer operating history and larger user base.

The contracts do not yet assign probabilities to whether either firm will go public in 2025 or 2026 specifically; rather, they express relative timing expectations and valuation ordering among participants actively trading on verified data feeds.

Nasdaq Private Market Partnership Anchors Market Settlement to Official Transaction Data

Polymarket’s ability to scale prediction markets on private companies rests on the partnership with Nasdaq Private Market, which maintains comprehensive records of secondary transactions involving the unicorns in question. Nasdaq Private Market serves as the data provider and settlement arbitrator, supplying the verified valuations and transaction details needed to resolve bets.

This arrangement addresses a longstanding barrier to private company speculation: the absence of transparent, real-time pricing comparable to public equity markets, where data from exchanges settles derivative contracts automatically.

Shayne Coplan, Polymarket’s founder and CEO, framed the launch as the first time ordinary investors and retail traders can directly engage with the value-formation decisions driving the world’s most valuable private companies.

The partnership’s design links Nasdaq’s surveillance of private share activity to Polymarket’s binary and probabilistic outcome structures, enabling traders to effectively crowdsource market expectations on discrete events like valuation thresholds or IPO filing dates.

For institutional investors, the arrangement provides a novel real-time sentiment read on private market multiples and founder-led valuations that complements traditional transaction-based analysis and secondary market pricing.

Tom Callahan, Nasdaq Private Market’s CEO, stated the partnership expands market participation while reinforcing the focus on accurate data and fair outcomes.

Crypto Prediction Market Platforms Race to Capture Pre-IPO Betting Volume

Polymarket’s move accelerates a competitive dynamic emerging across decentralized and centralized crypto exchanges seeking to carve out proprietary pre-IPO and private valuation markets.

TradeXYZ, operating on the Hyperliquid blockchain, introduced pre-IPO futures contracts on companies including SpaceX and Cerebras earlier this month, offering traders a parallel venue to speculate on private company futures without Nasdaq’s data partnership.

The concurrent launches signal that prediction market platforms view private company events as a high-margin, high-liquidity product class capable of attracting both crypto-native and institutional traders seeking leverage on unicorn outcomes.

The competitive landscape matters because it shapes which data sources become canonical for settling large position sizes. Polymarket’s Nasdaq backing provides regulatory legitimacy and institutional credibility that non-partnered platforms cannot easily replicate, yet TradeXYZ’s Hyperliquid-based model offers traders leverage and cost structures appealing to derivatives-focused participants.

US wagers on Polymarket have reached $39 billion year-to-date in 2026, demonstrating the platform’s momentum beyond political betting, which historically dominated its volume. The expansion into private company events marks a strategic pivot toward sustained institutional interest in event markets rather than cyclical election cycles.

Comparable platforms betting on corporate milestones and IPO outcomes indicate the crypto prediction market sector is maturing beyond novelty entertainment into a functional capital allocation tool.

Companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, Databricks, and Kraken are now subjects of formal prediction markets, allowing traders to aggregate dispersed information about these firms’ performance and trajectory. The shift echoes how prediction markets on geopolitical events and weather outcomes have evolved from Reddit forums into institutional-grade forecasting infrastructure.

SpaceX and Stripe IPO Timing Remain the Largest Open Questions for Traders

The prediction markets reveal divergent trader expectations on SpaceX’s path to public markets compared to the AI company hierarchy.

SpaceX, valued at $210 billion in its most recent private funding round, faces CEO Elon Musk’s well-documented skepticism of public market discipline and disclosure requirements, creating structural uncertainty around whether an IPO is inevitable versus remain private indefinitely under his control.

Stripe, the payments infrastructure company valued at $95 billion, similarly presents an unsettled timeline: founder Patrick Collison has expressed no public urgency to pursue an IPO, and the company maintains sufficient revenue and capital to fund growth without equity markets access.

Traders pricing Anthropic as 69% likely to IPO before OpenAI signal confidence in the younger firm’s capital-raising pace and founder alignment with public markets, factors that do not apply equally to SpaceX or Stripe.

The launch also arrives during a volatile period for newly public companies and IPO candidate valuations. The 2024 IPO market saw mixed debut performance, with some debuts gaining on day one while others fell 20% or more, creating hesitation among private company founders and boards about timing windows.

Prediction market signals on IPO sequencing and valuation gates could inform decision-making by company boards, venture investors, and underwriters now navigating depressed public market multiples and regulatory headwinds affecting tech sector IPO windows.

Polymarket has not announced specific launch dates for prediction markets on SpaceX or Stripe IPO timing, nor has it disclosed which private companies will receive formal contracts next