“AI is driving one of the largest investment cycles in history, despite the financial infrastructure around it remaining quite underdeveloped,” said Max Killberg of Village Global. He said the firm sees an opportunity to develop financial markets around AI, rather than simply back another prediction market.

Manifold Markets co-founder Stephen Gruggett told CoinDesk that MNX’s approach is better suited to private companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, whose shares trade infrequently and are difficult to price.

“OpenAI, Anthropic secondaries are illiquid and hard to price,” he said. “A perp based on an illiquid, stale price is worse than meaningless: it doesn’t behave the way investors expect; it’s easy to manipulate; and it may have a very high and unpredictable funding rate.”

Traders can also use up to three times their available funds, increasing both potential profits and losses.

Prices are determined by trading activity on MNX rather than an external price feed. If a company remains private when its contract expires, the exchange uses publicly available valuations from funding rounds, investment funds or secondary markets. As a last resort, MNX can determine the settlement price itself, subject to a published review princess.

That means traders could end up settling their bets at a price different from what investors might actually pay for shares in a private transaction.