Hyperliquid defies the market by riding the AI giant IPO boom, with HYPE surging 69% year-to-date

BlockBeats reported on May 18 that Hyperliquid's platform token HYPE rose against the market trend despite a broader crypto market downturn, gaining over 5% in the past 24 hours and achieving a cumulative increase of 69% this year. Market attention is focused on its HIP-3 pre-IPO perpetual contract ecosystem, with related trading volume surpassing $120 billion.

According to reports, Hyperliquid has launched pre-listing perpetual contracts for popular AI companies' IPOs, such as SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. Among these, the Cerebras perpetual contract introduced by TradeXYZ showed only about a 3% difference from the Nasdaq opening price, while traditional secondary market quotes had deviations as high as 35%.

Currently, the SpaceX pre-IPO contract SPCX is live on Hyperliquid, with a reference valuation of approximately $1.78 trillion. Market expectations suggest SpaceX's IPO may raise $75–80 billion, while valuations for Anthropic and OpenAI are also targeting the $1 trillion range.

Analysts believe that the HIP-3 model allows retail investors to participate in pre-IPO price discovery for major tech companies through on-chain markets for the first time, but it may also face regulatory scrutiny from US authorities regarding "unregistered securities exposure."