Polymarket now lets you bet on what OpenAI and Anthropic are worth

@Polymarket has launched what it describes as the first prediction markets tied to private company performance, giving retail traders a way to take positions on some of the most closely watched names in tech and AI. The markets, which went live on May 19, cover valuations, IPO timing, and secondary share activity for a roster that includes SpaceX, Stripe, Databricks, Anduril, Neuralink, and more.

Nasdaq Private Market as the data backbone

Through an exclusive agreement, Nasdaq Private Market (@NPM) will serve as the resolution data provider for private company markets on Polymarket. The firm operates secondary market infrastructure for private-company shares and tracks transaction and valuation data across private markets. That data will determine how each yes-or-no contract resolves. The new offering also creates an additional price discovery tool for institutional investors, complementing NPM's transaction-based pricing data already relied on by some of the largest financial institutions in the world.

AI valuations front and center

Early market pricing reflects the pace of the AI race. Traders have assigned roughly 76% odds to OpenAI reaching a $900 billion valuation by December 31, while data from the platform shows an 88% chance that Anthropic's valuation will be $1 trillion or above by the same date. Those figures will shift in real time as participants trade, giving both retail and institutional observers a live read on crowd sentiment around two of the most valuable private companies in the world.

The launch comes as companies stay private for longer periods, with several startups now reaching valuations comparable to S&P 500 companies. Polymarket is positioning the new contracts not only as a speculative product but also as a real-time price-discovery signal for institutional investors who have historically had limited visibility into private market pricing.

Because private markets lack the transparency of public equities, pricing information often emerges slowly through funding rounds or secondary sales, making crowd-sourced prediction data a potentially useful supplement to traditional valuation benchmarks.

Sources:
Polymarket official press release via Business Wire
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