Pre-IPO Perps Rally as Cerebras, SpaceX Markets Attract Traders

TradeXYZ, a decentralized perpetual futures platform built on Hyperliquid’s framework, listed pre-IPO perpetual contracts for AI chipmaker Cerebras and for SpaceX earlier this month. Cerebras priced its IPO at $185 and opened on Nasdaq at $350. About an hour before the market open, the Cerebras perpetual contract on TradeXYZ was quoted near $340, while shares on a conventional secondary venue were trading around $225.

The Cerebras market became an early example of crypto-native pre-IPO trading where synthetic derivatives moved ahead of some secondary prices and closely tracked the public open. Atomist, the pseudonymous co-founder of Castle Labs, noted: “Retail traders who entered the TradeXYZ perp at or below the $185 IPO offering price on May 1 were up roughly 90% by the Nasdaq open at $350 just 14 days later.” He added that many retail investors lacked any off-chain access to the IPO allocation.

TradeXYZ also launched a perpetual tied to SpaceX as the company prepares for a potential IPO after its recent merger with xAI and the acquisition of X. Reports have placed a possible SpaceX valuation as high as $1.75 trillion. Interest in pre-IPO perpetuals has also followed broader activity among large private firms, including companies that market participants expect may pursue listings over time.

Perpetual futures give traders synthetic exposure to private companies without transferring ownership of shares. Market participants highlighted the size of recent activity: the Cerebras market generated roughly $207 million in notional trading volume within two weeks. Amir Hajian of Keyrock noted that when liquidity and continuous funding exist, perp markets can compress pricing gaps between proto-public trading and the eventual public-market open. He projected that at least three pre-IPO perpetual markets could price future listings within 1–2% of the public-market open by year-end.

Current markets remain largely retail-driven and thin for large institutional hedging. Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer at Arca, described the prevailing markets as closer to sentiment instruments than deep valuation venues, while adding that imperfect sentiment can still influence broader perceptions. Lex Sokolin of Generative Ventures pointed to open-interest limits and shallow market depth, which prevent many venture firms from using perps to hedge large fund positions. Typical venture fund marks on single names often run into the hundreds of millions or billions, while many perpetual markets cap open interest at much smaller amounts.

The contracts carry specific risks. Perpetuals do not convey ownership or governance rights, and settlement often relies on reference prices compiled from secondary trades, tender offers, or platform indexes. Hajian warned these reference mechanisms can be opaque and vulnerable to manipulation on thin markets. Several platforms offering pre-IPO perennial contracts operate offshore and restrict U.S. users, factors that have attracted regulatory attention over wash trading, spoofing and sanction-screening concerns.

Founders and employees of private companies may face reputational or cap-table effects from visible perp prices. Omar Shakeeb, co-founder of SecondLane, cautioned that a leveraged perpetual trading sharply lower could generate headlines even if the underlying company had no operational change. He added that persistent discounts to a last funding round could push employees to seek liquidity earlier, while sustained premiums might encourage holders to delay secondary sales.

Technical infrastructure for these markets has expanded. The HIP-3 framework allows third-party teams to launch perpetuals, and several trading days across the ecosystem recently reached multi-billion-dollar volumes. TradeXYZ accounts for a large share of that activity, while other venues show much smaller market share. Market participants expect continued growth in pre-IPO perpetual trading if liquidity and market integrity expand, and they continue to monitor how these markets track public listings and influence secondary pricing.