The spread is widening between AI leaders OpenAI and Anthropic as a sell-off in CoreWeave leads neocloud stocks lower. OpenAI’s valuation has decreased by over 4% in the last 24 hours, having briefly fallen below $1.5 trillion, as indicated by perpetual futures pricing on the decentralised exchange Hyperliquid. Meanwhile, Anthropic perps have increased by 2.4% during the same timeframe, rebounding from an overnight decline and suggesting a valuation exceeding $2 trillion. Perpetuals represent wagers that lack an expiration date. They are sustained by “deployers” on Hyperliquid’s blockchain infrastructure, which establish a funding rate for taking long or short positions in the futures market.
This is based on a spot “oracle” price that incorporates third-party data, such as private funding rounds and secondary market transactions, to approximate private-market prices. Open interest, as defined by Hyperliquid, represents the aggregate of long and short positions on a contract. In this context, it is noteworthy that Anthropic’s open interest exceeds that of OpenAI by a factor of more than five, amounting to over $41 million, while OpenAI’s stands at less than $7 million. Currently, the entity responsible for the deployment of these pre-IPO contracts – the developer constructing the exchange – is Entropy IO.
TradeXYZ, the leading developer on the platform, generally refrains from listing pre-IPO perps until S-1s are made public, as stated by David Schamis. “Liquidity will probably be deeper once TradeXYZ lists these companies,” Schamis said in a call. “Generally these will trade at a premium to the IPO price but they do a good job predicting where it will be post-IPO.” The significant decline in OpenAI perps indicates the company’s increasing association with GPU rental service CoreWeave, which saw its shares reach a new one-year low on Thursday. This drop extends the company’s decline over the past year to 54%, amid rising concerns regarding its debt-financing strategy.
In April, CoreWeave revealed a partnership with Anthropic aimed at enhancing the company’s Claude products, although the financial specifics of the agreement were not made public. The company’s relationship with OpenAI has a longer history, and as of September 2025, it was valued at a minimum of $22 billion, which includes a five-year agreement to supply datacenters and technology. In the past 24 hours, OpenAI’s perpetual contracts have experienced a steeper decline compared to those of Anthropic, with both entities witnessing a drop of approximately 15% from their peaks observed last month, as indicated by Hyperliquid pricing.
