Hyperliquid Defies Market Downturn as SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI IPOs Loom

Hyperliquid’s native token HYPE is outperforming the broader crypto market slump as its pre-IPO perpetual futures ecosystem gains momentum ahead of a historic wave of technology listings.

HYPE is trading at $45.17 on Monday, up roughly 5% over the past 24 hours and 69% over the past year, according to CoinGecko data.

The divergence is tied to Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 marketplace, where traders are betting on pre-IPO shares of SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI, a $120 billion volume opportunity that traditional finance cannot offer.

The HIP-3 framework, which allows third-party teams to launch their own perpetual futures markets, has processed more than $120 billion in total volume since launch, according to Dune Analytics data. On April 8, HIP-3 deployers generated 48.1% of Hyperliquid’s total platform volume, approaching parity with the platform’s own native markets.

That parity means retail traders can now access pre-IPO price exposure that was previously available only to institutional investors through secondary venues.

TradeXYZ, the leading HIP-3 deployer, demonstrated the model works when it priced Cerebras perpetuals within 3% of the AI chipmaker’s Nasdaq debut while traditional secondary platforms were 35% off.

The gap showed that on-chain pre-IPO markets achieved faster, more accurate price discovery than off-chain alternatives.

“For years, retail investors often entered once companies were already public and much of the upside had already played out,” Diego Martin, CEO of Yellow Capital, told Decrypt. “This feels like the beginning of a much bigger shift in who gets to participate.”

What’s next: SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI IPOs

The next cohort of test cases is already forming, with multiple popular IPOs lined up for 2026.

SpaceX is targeting a June IPO that could raise between $75 and $80 billion, roughly double the total raised across all 2025 IPOs combined, at a valuation of up to $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion, according to Reuters. Anthropic and OpenAI are each eyeing listings that could raise $60 billion at valuations exceeding $1 trillion.

A SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual contract, SPCX, is already live on TradeXYZ with a $150 reference price. That pricing implies a valuation of roughly $1.78 trillion. The token is currently trading at $207, down roughly 10% from Monday’s $230 local top.

Market expectations are already pricing in the magnitude of these listings.

On prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, users assign a 91% chance that SpaceX’s closing market cap will exceed $1.3 trillion, and give Anthropic a 67% chance of going public before OpenAI.

Matthew Pinnock, COO of Altura DeFi, told Decrypt the Cerebras market showed how on-chain infrastructure can outpace traditional secondary markets on price formation. “24/7 crypto rails, leveraged positioning, and global participation can create faster consensus formation around late-stage private assets, particularly for sectors like AI where demand is heavily retail-driven and information moves quickly,” he said.

The category carries meaningful regulatory risk, Pinnock added, and he expects regulators to eventually scrutinize whether pre-IPO perpetual products function as unregistered securities exposure for retail traders. OpenAI and Anthropic have already warned investors against trading in securities tied to companies that they have not authorized.

The platform’s ambitions have drawn early attention from Wall Street: Intercontinental Exchange and CME Group have reportedly urged the CFTC to address potential market integrity risks associated with Hyperliquid’s pseudonymous trading environment. The Hyperliquid Policy Center pushed back, arguing the platform’s transparency is “hostile” to insider trading.

“Instead of being focused purely on digital assets, crypto infrastructure starts becoming a way for people to participate in broader financial opportunities,” Martin said. “That is a story a much larger audience can understand.”