Pre-IPO tokens: what you hold and what can go wrong
Pre-IPO tokens track a private company through a vehicle and carry no shareholder rights: the structures, the OpenAI and Anthropic warnings, the checks.
Pre-IPO tokens are crypto tokens that track the value of a private company before it lists, usually through a special purpose vehicle (SPV) that holds shares or share interests and issues tokens against them. The company does not issue them, and the holder owns a claim on the vehicle, never a share. Cherry (cherry.fun) is a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto, where a pasted pre-IPO token looks like any other Solana token.
How pre-IPO tokens work
Three structures sell under the same label.
| Structure | Example | What the token follows | What the holder has |
|---|---|---|---|
| SPV-backed token | PreStocks, Jarsy | The share price, through entities holding the exposure | Economic exposure; PreStocks says its tokens “confer no ownership, voting, dividend, information, or other legal rights” |
| Synthetic valuation market | Ventuals | A perpetual contract on the valuation, no shares bought (Tiger Research, August 2025) | A derivative position; in October 2026 its app reads “Ventuals is sunsetting.” |
| Broker promotional token | Robinhood EU, 2025 | Robinhood’s stake in an SPV, in Robinhood’s words | A token from a “limited stock token giveaway on OpenAI and SpaceX to eligible European customers”, per Robinhood |
PreStocks runs on Solana and says “Our tokens are 1:1 backed by SPV exposure to the underlying company shares.” Its FAQ in October 2026 says attestation reports are “published periodically or available on request if costs are covered”; CoinMarketCap Academy reported in May 2026 that PreStocks had not published the reports it promised at launch.
What a holder gets
A price and the issuer’s promises. No vote, no dividend, no company information. An IPO does not turn the token into a share: PreStocks’ FAQ says the position becomes convertible “into an equivalent tokenized public stock” for nine months after the IPO, after which “the tokens will expire worthless and will no longer be supported.”
Eligibility, in PreStocks’ words (October 2026): “PreStocks are unavailable in the United States, in any country subject to US, UK, or EU sanctions, or in any country where their use is prohibited by law.”
What OpenAI and Anthropic said
Both companies say transfers they did not approve do not count.
- Anthropic, May 2026: third parties claiming to sell its equity through tokenized securities and other mechanisms are “likely either engaged in fraud or offering an investment that may have no value”, as CoinMarketCap Academy reported on 13 May 2026. Its help page, updated 29 June 2026: “We do not permit special purpose vehicles (SPVs) to acquire Anthropic stock and any transfer of shares to an SPV are void under our transfer restrictions.”
- OpenAI, May 2026: CoinMarketCap Academy reported that OpenAI issued a parallel warning “stating that unauthorized transactions may violate US securities laws and could result in the invalidation of the underlying equity.” It also reported that the PreStocks tokens tied to both companies fell sharply that week.
The SEC’s pre-IPO investor alert warns you could lose your entire investment.
Example on Cherry
Paste the mint of a pre-IPO token in a Cherry chat and the message renders the standard token card. In the Cherry web app it shows price and 24h change, “MC”, “FDV”, “24h Vol” and “Liq”, and “BUY” where Jupiter can trade the token, or “NOT TRADABLE” where it cannot. A check next to the symbol is Jupiter’s verified mark. The card is market data: it cannot show who issued the token, what backs it, or what rights it carries.
The Trading Terminal mini app ’s Stocks & RWAs board lists xStocks; check the Verified mark and the RWA tag, because tokens that copy xStock names also turn up in its full list. Pre-IPO tokens are not on that board.
Before tapping BUY on a card like this, read the issuer’s rights and eligibility lines, find its conversion deadline, and look up the company’s statement on unauthorized transfers. Nothing here is financial advice. Tokens can lose value.
Related terms
FAQ
Can I buy OpenAI stock with crypto? Not OpenAI shares. Tokens sold as OpenAI exposure track a vehicle an intermediary runs and carry no shareholder rights. When Robinhood gave EU customers OpenAI tokens in 2025, OpenAI said on 2 July 2025 that “These ‘OpenAI tokens’ are not OpenAI equity.”
Sources
- CoinMarketCap Academy on the Anthropic and OpenAI warnings, 13 May 2026
- Anthropic’s help page on unauthorized stock sales
- CoinDesk on OpenAI and Robinhood’s tokens, 2 July 2025
- PreStocks and its FAQ
- Tiger Research on Ventuals, Jarsy and PreStocks, 7 August 2025
- SEC investor alert: pre-IPO investment scams
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