Lighter will settle and delist its Anthropic pre-IPO perp on the first Friday after the IPO

What Lighter announced

Lighter has set out what happens to its ANTHROPIC pre-IPO perpetual once Anthropic's shares start trading. In a thread on 6 November 2026, the exchange said the market will settle and be delisted 5 to 10 minutes before the market close on the first Friday after the IPO. Open positions are closed out at that point at a settlement price, rather than carried into a new market.

The plan matters now because the listing may be close. Phantom said on 9 November, citing a Kalshi post, that Anthropic's IPO is expected next week. Anthropic itself has filed for a proposed IPO but has not announced a first trading date, so treat any date as expected rather than fixed.

How the settlement price works

Lighter quotes its pre-IPO markets in market cap rather than in dollars per share. One unit tracks one share out of an assumed 1 billion, so a price of 1,500 means the market is valuing Anthropic at about $1.5 trillion on a fully diluted basis.

At settlement, Lighter converts the real share price back into that unit. It multiplies the public share price by Anthropic's fully diluted share count and divides by 1 billion. The share count comes from the final IPO prospectus (the 424(b) filing), or from the latest amended S-1 if the prospectus is not available, and it includes outstanding shares, options, restricted stock units and convertibles. It is fixed at the IPO and does not change afterwards.

That has a practical consequence. Lighter warns that the implied market cap it uses may differ from the figure shown by public data providers, which usually count only basic shares outstanding. A trader who compares the Lighter price with a headline market cap on listing day may see a gap that is a difference in method, not a mispricing.

What it does not do

Lighter's documentation says pre-IPO markets do not turn into share-price markets. There is no automatic switch into an Anthropic stock perp: the pre-IPO contract simply ends at settlement, and anyone who wants exposure afterwards has to open a new position in a different product.

If the IPO is delayed or withdrawn, Lighter says the market keeps trading as usual under its pre-IPO rules. The docs add that a large price divergence caused by a stock split can lead to an earlier settlement.

Risks and who can trade it

This is a synthetic, leveraged derivative on Anthropic's valuation, not Anthropic shares and not a place in the IPO. Before the listing its price comes only from trading on Lighter, so it can sit far from where the stock eventually opens. Leverage magnifies both gains and losses, and a sharp move in the days around the listing can trigger liquidations before settlement is reached. Lighter supports cross and isolated margin on these markets, and funding still applies, at a reduced rate.

Lighter's terms say its services are not available to people in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, Ukraine and a number of other countries.

Our take

Lighter has done what every venue offering an Anthropic pre-IPO contract should do: publish the exit rules before the listing, not after. The key points for a trader are that the contract ends on the first Friday after the IPO, that it settles on a fully diluted market cap, and that nothing rolls over. If you hold it into listing week, keep leverage low and plan the exit yourself.