Hypercall to launch first Anthropic-linked pre-IPO options market

Hypercall is launching what it says is the first options market tied to Anthropic ahead of its IPO.

The onchain options platform expects trading to begin Monday, founder Jake Sylvestre and growth and marketing head Dan Edlebeck told The Block. The contracts will trade around the clock but will not be available to U.S. customers.

The options are synthetic, cash-settled derivatives. This means that traders will not own actual Anthropic shares or receive any voting rights when a contract expires. Payouts will be calculated on a contract's strike price and reference price at expiry.

The launch would add options to a market that already offers Anthropic-linked perpetual futures contracts. Sylvestre said Hypercall supports everything from basic calls and puts, which he called "vanillas," to more advanced spreads and strategies. "It's a fully featured options platform," he said. "Any kind of option you want to structure, we can do."

Hypercall is built on Hyperliquid, where existing Anthropic-linked perps give market makers a way to hedge the risk of selling options before the company's shares begin trading publicly. Edleback said that gives Hypercall a head start: "We're able to provide options on these assets before anyone else can," he said.

The platform already offers options tied to SpaceX and the S&P 500 as well as major cryptos like bitcoin Bitcoin (BTC) and ether Ethereum (ETH), according to the executives. Sylvestre previously reported that Hypercall handled $536 million in options notional trading volume for September.

Rough winds for an Anthropic IPO

The rollout comes as traders become less confident that Anthropic will even go public this month or even before the end of 2026.

On Polymarket, the chances of a November IPO fell from roughly 88% Tuesday to as low as 51% by Thursday, while the probability of a January 2027 debut jumped from less than 1% to nearly 17%. The market had generated around $566,000 in trading volume.

A similar market on Kalshi, with nearly $4.9 million in volume, put the chances of an IPO before Dec. 1 at 60%, down from around 88%. Contracts on a debut before Jan. 1 and Feb. 1 traded at 63% and 85%, respectively.

Technology shares also sold off sharply on Thursday, with the Nasdaq falling around 6% during the session amid growing concerns around AI infrastructure spending.

Sylvestre said the market backdrop had changed his concerns about pricing the options, from a post-IPO rally to a potential slump.

"People that market make options are really pricing volatility," he said. "How fast it drops matters as much as how much it drops."

An option can expire worthless, but a price swing won't automatically trigger a margin liquidation like with trading perps on leverage.

Anthropic filed its S-1 on Oct. 26, with plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker ANT. The Claude developer reported $16.3 billion in first-half revenue and $9 billion in compute spending. Its prospectus revealed that its five largest customers accounted for around 25% of revenue through the end of September.