A new cryptocurrency exchange is offering traders a way to take leveraged positions on the future valuations of private artificial-intelligence companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek and Moonshot. MNX’s contracts are designed as an alternative to the perpetual futures already offered by larger crypto exchanges such as OKX and Bitget.
A new market for private AI valuations
MNX went live on Tuesday with futures contracts linked to four privately held AI companies. The exchange was developed by former Manifold executives and is built on the MegaETH blockchain. It raised $6.4 million in June in a funding round led by Village Global.
The contracts allow traders to speculate on how the companies could be valued, including if and when they eventually become publicly traded. Traders do not receive ownership of shares in the underlying businesses. Instead, they take positions on a contract whose value is linked to the market’s trading assessment of a company.
According to CoinDesk, MNX is positioning the product as a different approach to trading private-company valuations. OKX and Bitget already offer contracts that allow traders to bet on private AI companies without holding their shares.
The appeal of these products is tied to the difficulty of buying or pricing shares in private businesses. Transactions in private-company stock can be infrequent, and the prices from those transactions may not provide a continuously updated reference for trading.
How MNX contracts differ from perpetual futures
MNX’s contracts expire at the end of 2027. That distinguishes them from Bitget’s perpetual futures, which do not have a scheduled expiry. OKX also offers contracts without expiration, although it uses a different funding mechanism.
MNX says its contracts do not charge recurring funding fees. Such fees are commonly used in perpetual futures to help keep the contract price aligned with the market or reference price of the underlying asset. Removing that recurring charge changes the way traders carry a position over time, although it does not remove the other risks associated with the contracts.
Trading on MNX is leveraged: customers can use up to three times their available funds. Leverage can increase the size of gains as well as losses, meaning a relatively small change in the contract price can have a larger effect on a trader’s funds.
Prices on the platform are set by trading activity on MNX rather than by an external price feed. If one of the companies is still private when its contract reaches its expiry date, MNX will use publicly available valuation information from funding rounds, investment funds or secondary markets. If those sources are not available, the exchange can determine the settlement price itself under a published review process.
That mechanism creates an important distinction between the contract’s settlement value and the price an investor might actually pay to acquire shares in a private transaction. The two prices may differ, particularly because private-company shares can be difficult to trade and may change hands only occasionally.
MNX’s wider AI-market ambitions
Village Global investor Max Killberg said the investment case for MNX rests on the scale of capital moving into artificial intelligence and the relatively limited financial infrastructure built around that activity. He described the project as an effort to develop markets connected to AI, rather than simply creating another prediction market.
Stephen Gruggett, a co-founder of Manifold Markets, said MNX’s structure is better suited to private companies whose secondary-market shares are illiquid and difficult to value. He argued that a perpetual contract based on an old or infrequently traded price can be vulnerable to manipulation and can produce unpredictable funding costs.
MNX does not currently accept U.S. customers. Gruggett said the exchange plans to obtain the licenses needed to serve that market.
The company also plans to expand beyond contracts tied directly to private-company valuations. Its proposed markets could cover areas of the wider AI economy, including company revenue, employment, housing, the AI supply chain and computing capacity.
The launch comes as spending linked to AI is concentrated among a small group of technology companies. The source material, citing Bitcoin Suisse’s Crypto Wealth Management Report 2026, says the largest U.S. hyperscalers are expected to spend at least $800 billion this year and more than $1 trillion next year. MNX’s launch seeks to create tradable instruments around that broader economic activity, while leaving traders exposed to questions over liquidity, valuation and settlement.
Current market picture
Moneyiar market data at 20:28-20:29 on October 13, 2026, showed mixed performance among selected crypto assets:
- Ethena (ENA) traded at $0.2109422943, down 3.72% over 24 hours and 11.78% over seven days.
- Compound (COMP) was at $23.0584478671, down 3.4% in 24 hours and 5.1% over seven days.
- DeepBook Protocol (DEEP) stood at $0.0210237342, up 0.27% over 24 hours but down 9.03% over seven days.
- AKEDO (AKE) traded at $0.0252542043, gaining 4.96% over 24 hours while falling 13.72% over seven days.
These figures describe the selected assets’ market performance and are separate from MNX’s newly launched private-company futures.
