Hyperliquid-Based Ventuals Winds Down On-Chain Pre-IPO Markets

Ventuals is shutting down its on-chain pre-IPO trading platform and folding its team into another project building on Hyperliquid. The wind-down ends one of the first venues that let traders take leveraged positions on the valuations of private companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.

The platform announced the closure Monday morning on its X account. Ventuals said it traded more than $650 million in volume and raised over 500,000 HYPE across its run. The announcement did not name the Hyperliquid-ecosystem project the team is joining, nor did it detail a timeline for that move beyond the market-settlement dates.

Its two flagship pre-IPO markets, OPENAI and ANTHROPIC, were frozen at their trailing 24-hour time-weighted average prices of $1,341.80 and $1,618.90, then halted for trading at 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. ET. The platform's commodity markets, including WHEAT and SOY, and its index markets, including MAG7 and SEMIS, are set to settle June 18.

Ventuals ran on Hyperliquid, the layer-one blockchain whose HIP-3 standard lets outside teams deploy their own perpetual-futures markets backed by a HYPE stake. Traders used the venue to hold synthetic, leveraged exposure to companies that have no public shares, settling positions in stablecoins rather than equity.

HYPE traded around $67 on Monday, up roughly 12% over 24 hours and about 64% over the past 30 days, a rally that ran independent of the Ventuals closure as builder-deployed markets continued to drive activity to the network.

The structure put speculative price discovery on names like OpenAI in front of on-chain traders months or years before any listing. Ventuals described itself as the first on-chain derivatives protocol for private, pre-IPO company valuations, with each market tracking a synthetic price rather than a claim on actual shares. That distinction kept it clear of the tokenized-equity products that issue blockchain wrappers around real stock, a category Anthropic itself flagged as unauthorized when wrapped versions of its private shares surfaced on-chain.

How User Funds Settle

Every vHYPE holder can withdraw their deposited HYPE at a 1:1 rate plus accrued staking yield, Ventuals said. vHYPE was the platform's liquid staking token, documented as the receipt for HYPE deposited into the protocol. The 500,000 HYPE the platform reported raising is worth roughly $33 million at current prices, with HYPE trading around $67 on Monday.

The pre-IPO markets settled first. OPENAI and ANTHROPIC were marked at their trailing 24-hour time-weighted averages, a method that smooths out any final-minute volatility before a market closes for good. The commodity and index markets get a longer runway, settling June 18. By staggering the closes and pinning final marks to averaged prices, Ventuals routed the shutdown through orderly settlement rather than an abrupt halt that could have stranded open positions.

The points and referral programs are discontinued, and Ventuals confirmed there will be no Ventuals token. The closure leaves no path to the value-accruing token that points-based incentive programs typically tease.

The Pre-IPO Trading Arc on Hyperliquid

Ventuals was part of a wave of on-chain pre-IPO and tokenized-equity products that ran through Hyperliquid this year. Trade.xyz launched the first pre-IPO perpetual market for SpaceX on the network, and outside teams deploying their own markets pushed Hyperliquid to a record share of global perpetuals volume through the HIP-3 framework.

The appetite for private-company exposure has spread well beyond Hyperliquid. Polymarket launched prediction markets on private-company valuations using Nasdaq data, and Citi rolled out tokenized private-company shares for wealth and institutional clients, signs that demand for access to names like OpenAI is pulling in both crypto-native and traditional venues.

Pre-IPO exposure has drawn scrutiny alongside the trading interest. The Block reported that Ventuals moved to compensate traders earlier this year after its pre-IPO SpaceX perpetuals plunged 45% in a session, an episode that underscored how thin the price discovery on private names can be.