Perpetual futures come onshore, from Hyperliquid via Kraken to ETFs on private AI labs

Overall verdict: competitive. The venue layer is already full, and an independent reference price for private companies is the stronger of your two ideas. Kraken via Bitnomial, Coinbase, Kalshi, Crypto.com and soon Cboe already list CFTC-regulated perps. Every one of them owns its exchange or clearing stack and runs margin, liquidation and funding logic in house. Margin and risk layer: I found no vendor selling perp-specific margin, liquidation or funding-rate risk tooling to retail brokers or FCMs. The searches turned up only exchange help pages and one academic paper on perp liquidity risk. The customers would be brokers and FCMs that reach these venues instead of owning one. That includes retail apps that want perps but can't build 24/7 mark-price margining, insurance-fund monitoring and funding accrual themselves. The CFTC's May 2026 guidance points the same way: it stresses 24/7 margining, real-time surveillance and FCM risk management, and gives FCMs no-action relief to route customers to offshore perps. I didn't search the big incumbents like CQG, Trading Technologies, Nasdaq or FIS directly, so one of them may already be adding perp support. The opening is probably a fairly narrow middleware product, and it has to arrive before the incumbents get there. Private-company reference prices: this side is more crowded but also messier. Pyth publishes Anthropic and OpenAI indices. Forge Price and Caplight sell daily private marks. Each venue uses its own method: Coinbase a valuation index that rebases at IPO, Kraken a smoothed and clamped index, Ondo an internal order-book oracle, Crypto.com third-party oracles. Quoting units differ across venues; one Hyperliquid market quotes Anthropic near 1,894 and another near 115.6. Perps price Anthropic around $1.87 trillion, against $965 billion at its last private round. What's missing is a neutral, published benchmark for regulated use: something that ETF issuers can use for fair-value NAV and swap resets, and that DCMs can take to the CFTC as a settlement index. It would need clear rules for unit normalization, rebasing at IPO, and blending secondary data with perp prices. The MN ETF already prices its swaps off perps, and AGIX has to mark a private Anthropic stake, so the demand exists. The main threats are that Forge, Caplight or Pyth move into regulated benchmarks, and that Anthropic's IPO, with an S-1 reportedly filed October 26, shrinks that name's use case. The product would then depend on coverage of the next wave of private labs.

• Kraken / Bitnomial (Payward)

  Kraken launched CFTC-regulated perps for US traders through Kraken Pro, listed on Bitnomial, a CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse that Payward acquired. Bitnomial does exchange, clearing and clearing-broker work in house, so its own risk stack competes with any outside margin layer. Kraken also lists OpenAI and Anthropic pre-IPO perps using a smoothed synthetic index, with the mark clamped to a 0.25% band.

• Coinbase (Coinbase Financial Markets, Coinbase Clearing, Deribit)

  Holds exchange, FCM and DCO registrations and offers US perps. Its OpenAI and Anthropic pre-IPO perps are priced off a valuation-based index, and the contract rebases to a per-share perp at IPO through a P&L-neutral adjustment. It builds its own index and risk methods.

• Kalshi perpetuals

  Has CFTC approval for BTC perps. It publishes its own margin rules and a default-fund waterfall, so its risk tooling is built in house.

• Cboe perpetual-style futures

  Plans BTC and ETH perpetual-style futures cleared through Cboe Clear US, which brings an incumbent exchange and clearer into the space.

• Crypto.com Exchange perps and pre-IPO perps

  Offers perps through a CFTC-registered FCM, plus pre-IPO perps on OpenAI, SpaceX and Anthropic priced from third-party oracles and secondary-market data.

• Pyth Network pre-IPO indices

  Publishes indicative Anthropic and OpenAI pre-IPO indices that update seven days a week. This competes directly with the private-company reference price idea.

• Forge Price (Forge Global)

  A daily derived price for about 200 to 250 late-stage private companies, built from secondary trades, funding rounds and indications of interest. Forge markets it for building indexes and financial products.

• Caplight MarketPrice

  Daily secondary-market price points for more than 180 pre-IPO companies, built from round, trade and order data. A likely data input to, or competitor of, a reference-price business.

• Trade.xyz on Hyperliquid

  Launched an Anthropic pre-IPO perp on Hyperliquid on October 26, 2026. Hyperliquid's ANTH-style markets are quoted in different units, so prices have to be normalized before venues can be compared. Ventuals ran similar markets there and wound down in June.

• Ondo Perps

  Lists an OpenAI pre-IPO perp at 3x. When no external price is available, its internal oracle updates from order-book activity.

• Corgi MANGOS ETF (MN)

  An ETF launched in October 2026 that gets OpenAI and Anthropic exposure through total return swaps. The swaps are initially priced with reference to perpetual futures, which shows ETF issuers already need perp-derived marks.

• KraneShares AGIX

  An ETF holding a direct Anthropic stake and tracking an index of public and private AI companies. It needs fair-value marks for the private holding.

Checked 2026-10-28