Key Takeaways
A new prediction market contract is pricing in a 93 percent chance that artificial intelligence startup Anthropic will reach a $1 trillion valuation before the end of 2026, a sign of the intense speculative interest in the sector’s largest private companies.
Prediction markets are "taking the spotlight now because [they are] accessible," Jeff Kilburg, founder and chief executive of KKM Financial, told CNBC, pointing to their binary outcomes and the wide menu of available events that now includes the valuations of major tech startups.
The contract, trading on the Polymarket platform, implies a current private valuation for the Claude model developer at approximately $949 billion as of late May. The data also assigns an 88 percent probability to the company reaching $1.25 trillion and a 76 percent chance of hitting $1.5 trillion by December 31, according to the platform's data.
For investors, these markets are becoming a real-time sentiment gauge for the world’s most consequential private companies, which have raised billions outside of public markets. The launch of contracts tied to firms like Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX on platforms using data from Nasdaq Private Market signals a new, albeit speculative, avenue for price discovery ahead of their highly anticipated public offerings.
The emergence of high-stakes betting on private company milestones represents a significant shift in financial markets. Platforms like Polymarket are now offering event contracts tied to the performance of unicorns, with Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, investing roughly $1.6 billion into the platform, according to its own statements. These are not stock purchases, but binary bets that pay out based on whether a specific, verifiable event occurs.
This development provides a crack in the velvet rope surrounding the most valuable companies of this generation, including OpenAI, SpaceX, and Stripe, which have collectively been valued at over $5 trillion, according to Polymarket. Retail and institutional traders can now take a financial position on outcomes like OpenAI surpassing a $1 trillion valuation, even without direct access to secondary share sales.
The surge in speculative interest around Anthropic comes at a pivotal moment for the AI industry. In a single day, as The Wall Street Journal reported, three of history's hottest startups—SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic—all took steps toward the public markets. Fresh off a $45 billion deal with SpaceX that shored up its access to computing resources, Anthropic told investors it expects to generate its first-ever quarterly operating profit in the second quarter of 2026. This surprising forecast puts it ahead of many AI peers who are still forecasting years of heavy spending.
The move intensifies the perceived race between Anthropic, its primary rival OpenAI, and Elon Musk's xAI. While Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI was dismissed, his xAI has struggled to gain traction, while Anthropic's deal with SpaceX and its path to profitability suggest a formidable competitive position.
While investor enthusiasm remains high, some analysts urge caution. "The market has priced AI’s potential but has not factored in the cost of the vulnerabilities these systems could create at scale," said Navrina Singh, chief executive of Credo AI, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Barclays analysts recently referred to prediction markets as "retail's shiny new toy," and regulators like the CFTC are signaling closer attention to contract settlement and source integrity.
For public market investors, the activity in private market prediction contracts offers a valuable, if volatile, leading indicator. The sentiment around Anthropic and OpenAI directly impacts their capital partners and cloud providers, such as Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL). Microsoft's stock has underperformed in 2026, with analysts pointing to concerns about the cost of its AI spending and the growth of its Azure cloud business relative to peers. The eventual IPOs of Anthropic or SpaceX, potentially the largest in market history, will be the ultimate test of whether these prediction markets are a loud casino or a legitimate price-discovery tool.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
