Hypercall to launch Anthropic-linked options before a possible IPO

Hypercall expects Anthropic-linked options trading to begin Monday, according to founder Jake Sylvestre and growth and marketing head Dan Edlebeck, in what the onchain platform calls the first pre-IPO options market for Anthropic.

Traders in select non-US jurisdictions will have access to calls, puts and more complex strategies. The contracts will trade around the clock, with fractional sizing for smaller positions. Hypercall will not offer them to U.S. customers.

The contracts are synthetic, cash-settled derivatives. A trader receives no actual Anthropic shares and gains no voting rights when a contract expires. Payouts will be calculated from the contract’s strike price and the reference price at expiry.

What does this change for traders?

For traders, the practical change is access to a continuously traded synthetic instrument with fractional sizing, not direct ownership of Anthropic or voting rights before a public listing. Hypercall is built on Hyperliquid, where Anthropic-linked perpetual futures give market makers a route to hedge option risk before Anthropic shares begin trading publicly.

Edlebeck said: “We’re able to provide options on these assets before anyone else can.” Sylvestre said the platform supports basic calls and puts through advanced spreads and other structured strategies.

Hypercall already offers options linked to SpaceX, the S&P 500, major stocks, bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH). Sylvestre previously reported $536 million in options notional trading volume for September.

IPO expectations have shifted

The launch arrives as traders show less confidence that Anthropic will list this month or before the end of 2026, leaving prediction-market estimates scattered across late 2026 and early 2027.

• On Polymarket, the implied chance of a November IPO fell from roughly 88% Tuesday to as low as 51% by Thursday.
• The implied chance of a January 2027 debut rose from less than 1% to nearly 17%.
• The Polymarket market generated around $566,000 in trading volume.
• A similar Kalshi market drew nearly $4.9 million in volume.
• Kalshi’s implied chance of a debut before Dec. 1 fell to 60%, from about 88%.
• Contracts implied 63% odds for a debut before Jan. 1 and 85% before Feb. 1.

Technology shares sold off sharply Thursday. The Nasdaq fell around 6% during the session as concern about AI infrastructure spending grew. That backdrop changed Sylvestre’s focus from pricing a post-IPO rally to accounting for a potential slump.

Sylvestre said: “People that market make options are really pricing volatility. How fast it drops matters as much as how much it drops.” An option can expire worthless, but a price swing does not automatically trigger a margin liquidation as it can with leveraged perpetual-futures positions.

That difference separates expiry risk from the automatic liquidation mechanism in leveraged perps. It does not make options risk-free, because option writers still sell contracts that require hedging.

Anthropic’s filing adds the business context

Anthropic filed its S-1 on Oct. 26 and plans to list on Nasdaq under ticker ANT. The Claude developer reported $16.3 billion in first-half revenue and $9 billion in compute spending.

Its prospectus showed that its five largest customers accounted for around 25% of revenue through the end of September. Those figures put two business variables beside the IPO timetable: high compute spending and meaningful customer concentration.

For market makers, both can matter alongside the pace and size of any price move. Hypercall’s structure does not settle that uncertainty. It gives traders continuous synthetic exposure while the public listing remains uncertain.

The next hard checkpoint is Monday’s expected launch; an Anthropic IPO delay would keep the options market operating without public shares, with perpetual futures continuing to provide a hedging route.