MNX went live on Tuesday, Oct. 13, with futures on four private AI labs: OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek and Moonshot, CoinDesk's Olivier Acuna reported1. MegaETH, a blockchain, powers MNX. Its contracts expire at the end of 2027 and charge zero recurring funding fees. Stephen Grugett, a co-founder of Manifold Markets, founded MNX in early 20262. Village Global led its $6.4 million round in June. MNX enters a field where OKX, Bitget and Coinbase already list contracts on private AI companies4.
Why a Date Replaces the Funding Rate
A perpetual future, or perp, runs open-ended. Buyers and sellers swap a funding payment on a schedule, which pulls the contract toward the asset's reference price4. That design assumes a reference price exists. Private labs lack one. Their shares change hands rarely, through secondary sales1.
Grugett built MNX around that gap. "OpenAI, Anthropic secondaries are illiquid and hard to price," Grugett told CoinDesk. “A perp based on an illiquid, stale price is worse than meaningless: it doesn't behave the way investors expect; it's easy to manipulate; and it may have a very high and unpredictable funding rate.”1.
MNX's answer is a dated contract. A dated future ends on a set day, and every open position closes at one final price. Prices form from trading on MNX itself, apart from any external price feed1. Traders can open positions up to three times their own funds. OKX also sells open-ended contracts, using a different funding method, CoinDesk reported. Bitget sells perps that run forever.
Both sides, in their own words
Will a fixed expiry make a private AI lab easier to price than a perp did?
“A perp based on an illiquid, stale price is worse than meaningless: it doesn't behave the way investors expect; it's easy to manipulate; and it may have a very high and unpredictable funding rate.”
“If the recent SPCX IPO is any indication, my suspicion is this has a better chance of being good news for COIN than for many retail traders, who may be drawn in by the pre-IPO action, rather than solid investment hygiene”
How a Private Lab Settles
MNX launched Oct. 13, 2026 at 3x leverage, against the 50x its June plan described
Maximum leverage, as a multiple of a trader's own funds, on each plan or contract
- MNX at launch: 3x
- Rival AI-lab perp: 3x
- Plan or other contract
Sources: CoinDesk [1]; Crypto Briefing [2]; Crypto Briefing [3].
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| MNX June plan | 50x |
| EntropyIO SanDisk | 10x |
| Anthropic perp | 3x |
| MNX at launch | 3x |
Every dated contract needs a final price. CoinDesk set out the rules for a lab that stays private when its contract expires1:
- MNX uses publicly available valuations from funding rounds, investment funds or secondary markets1.
- As a last resort, MNX sets the price itself, under a published review process1.
That second step carries the risk CoinDesk flagged. A trader could settle at a price different from what a private buyer would pay for real shares1. Crypto Briefing noted a related limit on Hyperliquid's pre-IPO perps: they carry zero equity, voting or dividend rights3.
From a 50x Pitch to 3x at Launch
MNX looked different in June. Crypto Briefing described an exchange where users keep custody of their own funds2. Its plan listed perps with up to 50 times leverage. A testnet market tracked the price of Nvidia's H100 chips. MNX skipped a native token entirely. The October launch shipped dated futures at three times leverage1. Max Kilberg of Village Global and Rex Salisbury of Cambrian both joined the June round, Crypto Briefing reported.
Kilberg framed the thesis for CoinDesk. “AI is driving one of the largest investment cycles in history, despite the financial infrastructure around it remaining quite underdeveloped,” Kilberg said1. MNX plans further markets on AI company revenue, jobs, housing, the AI supply chain and computing capacity. U.S. customers stay blocked for now, and Grugett said MNX plans to obtain licenses.
What the Earlier Venues Recorded
MNX went live Oct. 13, 2026, 113 days after Coinbase listed OpenAI and Anthropic perps
Dated events in pre-IPO AI contracts, June to October 2026
Sources: CoinDesk [1]; Crypto Briefing [2]; Crypto Briefing [3]; Barchart [4].
Read the chart as a table
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| June 2026 | Ventuals shuts perps. OpenAI and Anthropic perps on Hyperliquid |
| June 10, 2026 | MNX raises $6.4 million |
| June 22, 2026 | Coinbase lists AI perps. OpenAI and Anthropic, for traders outside the U.S. |
| Aug. 24, 2026 | EntropyIO lists Anthropic. 3x leverage on Hyperliquid's HIP-3 |
| Oct. 13, 2026 | MNX goes live. Contracts expire at the end of 2027 |
The earlier pre-IPO markets left a record. Ventuals ran OpenAI and Anthropic perps on Hyperliquid and shut them down in June 20263. A May pricing and oracle incident on a Ventuals SpaceX market set off liquidations, The Crypto Times reported5. Ventuals then pledged to compensate the traders hit. Coinbase opened OpenAI and Anthropic perps for traders outside the U.S. on June 224. In its design, a mark of 1,800 stands for a $1.8 trillion valuation.
EntropyIO launched on Hyperliquid's HIP-3 framework on Aug. 243. Its Anthropic perp carried three times leverage, and its SanDisk perp 10 times. EntropyIO delisted its OpenAI contract for inactivity before a single trade. Shortly after launch, the Anthropic contract implied a value near $2 trillion, Crypto Briefing reported. A private round in May had valued Anthropic near $965 billion5.
OpenAI has also spoken on synthetic exposure. "These 'OpenAI tokens' are not OpenAI equity," its newsroom account wrote in July 2025, answering Robinhood's tokens for users in the European Union6.
The Case For and the Case Against
Grugett's case rests on design. A fixed expiry strips out the funding rate he calls high and unpredictable1. An on-exchange order book replaces a stale outside price. Village Global sees room for financial markets around AI, beyond one more prediction market, Kilberg told CoinDesk.
Rob Isbitts, a Barchart columnist, weighed Coinbase's launch of the same asset class in June. “If the recent SPCX IPO is any indication, my suspicion is this has a better chance of being good news for COIN than for many retail traders, who may be drawn in by the pre-IPO action, rather than solid investment hygiene,” Isbitts wrote4. He stated his own stance in the same column. “Perpetual futures fall into the category of something I won't be chasing with my money, but I can't tell you what to do with yours,” he wrote.
Grugett's case needs MNX's books to draw steady two-sided volume on all four labs. Isbitts's case needs retail losses to outrun the price discovery these venues promise4. A lab that lists before the end of 2027 would hand both sides one public price to check against.
By the numbers
- Four labs carry MNX contracts at launch: OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek and Moonshot1.
- 3x: MNX's leverage cap at launch, against the 50x its June plan described12.
- $6.4 million: MNX's June round, led by Village Global1.
- 113 days separate Coinbase's June 22 launch from MNX's Oct. 13 launch14.
- Zero trades cleared on EntropyIO's OpenAI contract before its delisting3.
- $965 billion: Anthropic's value in its May private round5.
What to watch
- MNX's first published settlement review, if any of the four labs stays private into late 20271.
- Open interest on the DeepSeek and Moonshot contracts, which MNX lists beside OpenAI and Anthropic1.
- The licenses MNX needs before it can serve U.S. traders1.
Sources
- Olivier Acuna, "MegaETH-powered MNX goes live with pre-IPO futures for OpenAI, Anthropic and DeepSeek," CoinDesk, Oct. 13, 2026, https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/10/13/new-crypto-exchange-takes-on-okx-bitget-with-unique-way-to-trade-ai-giants
- "MNX raises $6.4M to build a futures exchange dedicated entirely to AI assets," Crypto Briefing, June 10, 2026, https://cryptobriefing.com/mnx-raises-6m-ai-futures-exchange/
- "EntropyIO lists pre-IPO perps on Hyperliquid, but OpenAI contract was delisted before anyone traded it," Crypto Briefing, Sept. 2, 2026, https://cryptobriefing.com/entropyio-pre-ipo-perps-hyperliquid/
- Rob Isbitts, "Coinbase Is Offering Pre-IPO Perpetual Futures on OpenAI and Anthropic. That's Better News for COIN Stock Than It Is for You.," Barchart, June 23, 2026, https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/coinbase-offering-pre-ipo-perpetual-142645858.html
- "Is Anthropic Worth $2T? Analyst Doubts the IPO Crypto Already Trades," The Crypto Times, Oct. 13, 2026, https://www.cryptotimes.io/2026/10/13/is-anthropic-worth-2t-analyst-doubts-the-ipo-crypto-already-trades/
- Maxwell Zeff, "OpenAI condemns Robinhood's 'OpenAI tokens'," TechCrunch, July 2, 2025, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openai-condemns-robinhood-openai-tokens-234327712.html