Ondo Perps lists a pre-IPO OpenAI perpetual with 3× leverage and a $1,600 seed price

What went live

Ondo Perps has opened a perpetual futures market on OpenAI, a company that is still private. The contract, listed as OPENAI-USD.P, went live on 21 October 2026, and Ondo's announcement pitches it plainly: go leveraged long or short on the company behind ChatGPT. Positions are margined and settled in USDC, use cross margin, and can carry at most 3× leverage, which is far below the levels offered on many crypto perpetuals.

The important word is pre-IPO. There is no public OpenAI share price for the contract to track, so Ondo's documentation describes it as a derivative on the company's market-implied value before a potential listing. Holding a position gives no share ownership and no allocation in any future IPO, and Ondo states directly that a listing is not guaranteed. What traders are buying or selling is a price that the order book itself discovers.

How the price is built

Ondo defines contract units with a fixed reference count of 1 billion shares. That is a unit convention, not an estimate of OpenAI's real share count, and it makes the arithmetic simple: the implied equity valuation equals the mark price multiplied by 1,000,000,000. A mark of $1,000 therefore implies a $1 trillion valuation. The market was seeded at an initial reference price of $1,600, which on the same convention is a $1.6 trillion implied valuation at launch.

Because no outside price feed exists yet, the mark comes from an internal oracle driven by activity in Ondo's own order book, smoothed with a 30-minute time constant and limited to a 1% move per update. The mark is also held inside a discovery band of 20% either side of the current reference price. When the internal price reaches 90% of the distance to a boundary, the band can re-anchor around the new level, but only four times upward and four times downward. Used resets do not come back if the price reverses, and they do not refill on a daily schedule. Once a direction runs out, the band simply stays where it is.

Price increments are 0.1 USDC and quantities move in steps of 0.001 contract units, according to the specification table.

Margin, funding and size limits

At the 3× maximum, the initial margin rate is 33.33% and the maintenance margin rate is 16.67%. As a rough illustration from those two figures alone, a fully leveraged long would approach liquidation after a fall of about one sixth in the mark, before fees and funding. Because positions use cross margin, other balances and positions in the same account also affect that threshold, so it is a guide rather than a precise number.

Funding is paid every hour and can be positive or negative, but Ondo applies a funding multiplier of 0.005 to this market, compared with 0.5 for its standard equity perpetuals, and caps the result at 1% per hourly interval. Ondo's reasoning is that funding should be damped while there is no public share price to anchor it. Size is limited too. Each account has a default maximum position of 625 contract units, about $1 million at the seed price, and the whole market has an open-interest cap of 5,937.5 units, or $9.5 million at $1,600. When that cap is hit, ordinary orders are rejected, including closing orders that are not marked reduce-only, so the documentation tells traders to use reduce-only when exiting.

What happens if OpenAI lists, or does not

A listing would not convert the market automatically. Ondo says it may move the contract to a standard equity perpetual once public-market data can reliably support the mark price, and the switch from internal to external pricing can cause a sudden jump in the mark and immediate liquidations. Ondo may also adjust the reference share count to match the listed shares; trading pauses for that, and every open order, including take-profit and stop-loss orders, is cancelled and not restored.

If an IPO is delayed or cancelled and Ondo decides to remove the contract, it will first announce the settlement timing and the method for calculating the price. Remaining positions are then settled at that announced price and the market closes, possibly after a trading halt. That means the final outcome of a long-dated position depends on a methodology that has not been published in advance.

Not the same as OPAIPon

Ondo already lists OPAIPon, an OpenAI Private Market Note that launched earlier in October. The two are separate markets. OPAIPon is a fully funded tokenized note on the spot order book, with no leverage and no funding payments, while the new contract is a margined perpetual on the perps order book. Both trade around the clock, and their prices and terms can differ.

Trading costs follow Ondo's perpetuals fee schedule, which is currently under a limited-time 50% promotion: 0.01% for makers and 0.025% for takers, down from 0.02% and 0.05%. Ondo has not said when the promotion ends.

Who can trade it

The legal notice attached to the launch thread bars sanctioned persons and anyone located in Panama, the United States or Canada, and it also excludes any jurisdiction that prohibits or restricts perpetual futures of this kind. The notice does not name the Netherlands, the wider EU or Türkiye, so readers there should check their local rules and Ondo's terms before opening an account. Ondo also warns that perpetual futures can lose the full amount committed.