Is Anthropic worth $2 trillion? Here's how the company is trading in a new tokenized market.

By Jules RimmerNot all fund managers are convinced by the valuation but perpetual futures are already pricing AnthropicChatGPT maker OpenAI and Claude producer Anthropic each have announced they plan to list on the stock market.In one trading location at least, Anthropic has already hit the magic $2 trillion valuation that its shareholders and AI bulls were seeking as confirmation and vindiation of the whole AI ecosystem.Perpetual futures on Anthropic started trading this week on the Hyperliquid trading platform, a 24/7 crypto platform that does not permit American users.The pre-IPO perpetual contracts translate directly to Anthropic's market capitalization via a $1.00 point equals $100 billion valuation index model. This Friday morning, the market is pricing a $1.968 billion valuation, having topped $2 trillion at one point, although turnover so far is only around $20 million.In the last week or so there has been a steady drumbeat of newsflow about the imminence of Anthropic's IPO. Bloomberg reported last week that Citi had been added to the roster of lead managers on the float, beside JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. On Thursday, sources with familiar with the company revealed to The Information that Anthropic plans to launch the bookrunning process after the Labor Day weekend.Hyperliquid is among the venues offering exposure to pre-IPO companies using toeknization.Another, called Tessera Lab, for example, had pre-IPO tokens on SpaceX and now offer Kalshi, the prediction market, as well as Anthropic rival OpenAI.The OpenAI token on Friday was trading at $837, implying an $837 billion valuation.Tessera invests in companies through a special purpose vehicle then provides investors the economic exposure to that company's valuation through the tokens. Once the company is floated, the SPV mechanically unwinds its position in the market. Like Hyperliquid, Tessera is blocked to Americans.Chan Anh, the chief executive and chief technology officer of Tessera Lab, is a venture capitalist who has been active in several companies including SpaceX ahead of their public listing has real doubts about Anthropic's desired valuation.Ahn was skeptical that Anthropic can achieve the $2 trillion valuation figure that has been widely circulated. Numbers around $1 trillion have been floated for OpenAI which Ahn thinks that may be more realistic.Chan Ahn is the CEO and CTO of Tessera LabTessera focuses on late-stage, pre-IPO private equity, companies that are planning to list within the next year or two providing an obvious catalyst for exiting the investment.Ahn discussed with MarketWatch the prospects for the two mega-IPOs looming. For him, the most important indicator of how well these proposed IPOs will fare might be the performance of SpaceX (SPCX) shares over the rest of this year. A concerted rally over and above its original $135 issue price may boost sentiment among retail investors and encourage them to subscribe to OpenAI and Anthropic. SpaceX was trading above $140 in premarket trade on Friday.Ahn did not launch an Anthropic product because he was unable to source exposure at the kind of valuation he was looking for.From the $2 trillion valuation that has been bandied about for Anthropic, Ahn reverse-engineered a discounted cash flow analysis valuation and calculated that Anthropic would need to grow from a present run rate of around $65 billion to something like $755 billion in the next decade.From Ahn's perspective, "that means compounding at something like 25% annually and also expanding operating profit margins from almost zero to about 25% at the same time. You can focus on growth, or you can focus on margin but concentrating on both at the same time is a very big ask" he thinks.He compares Anthropic to the likes of Meta, Microsoft and Amazon who were able to grow revenue of say, $100 billion at 15-20% annually for the last ten years, but "they had three businesses combined together whereas Anthropic just has one."OpenAI has an advantage, Ahn opines, chiefly in terms of brand recognition or "a better consumer franchise" but they too might have difficulty reaching the $1 trillion valuation they reportedly seek. When quizzed as to whether the whole narrative surrounding the IPO momentum could be lost if cheaper Chinese competition starts to eat into the market share, Ahn is realistic: "That's a possibility, yes."-Jules RimmerThis content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.