Key insights
- Polymarket is offering prediction markets on the valuations of pre-IPO companies like SpaceX and Anthropic, using Nasdaq Private Market data for settlement. This could offer new signals for investors to gauge private company valuations. Current bets suggest a $1 trillion valuation for Anthropic by year-end and SpaceX between $1.5T and $1.75T by June, potentially influencing sentiment around AI and space-related equities.
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There's a new way to trade buzzy IPO hopefuls before they go public.
Prediction markets operator Polymarket debuted a smattering of event contracts that let traders speculate on the valuations of popular private companies including Anthropic, Neuralink, OpenAI and SpaceX, whether they go public or not. That means bettors can put money on whether an AI company will be worth $3 trillion by the end of the year, or a fraction of that—potentially creating new signals investors can use to determine which direction a company's valuation is going.
Prediction markets are taking their approach to elections and sports games and applying them to private company valuations.
For example, Anthropic reportedly agreed to a $30 billion fundraising round to close as soon as this month that will value the company at $900 billion. A recent check shows that Polymarket traders are betting that that figure will balloon to $1 trillion by December 31.
Meanwhile, bettors are pricing in roughly 90% odds that SpaceX by June 30 will be worth somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $1.75 trillion, which would be in line with the the reported $1.75 trillion valuation it is said to be seeking in an IPO coming soon.
The tricky part is settling a bet on a private company valuation, without relying on its most recent fundraising valuation or waiting for it to go public and start trading. That's where Nasdaq Private Market, an investment platform for private company shares and a Polymarket partner, comes in.
The firm, which keeps track of private companies' funding rounds, secondary trading in them, as well as other market factors, will be the final arbiter of those event contracts if the company in question remains private by the end of the bets' specified terms. It publishes an estimate of private company valuations at 1 p.m. ET daily—last putting Anthropic's valuation at $923 billion, and SpaceX's at $1.4 trillion.
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