Senator Gillibrand's 22-Year-Old Son Raises $30M to Launch Perpetual Futures Exchange

Theodore Gillibrand, the freshly minted Stanford graduate and son of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), has raised $30 million to build a regulated perpetual futures exchange called American Perpetuals Exchange Corp. — or APEC. The fundraise was led by Lux Capital and valued the startup at $300 million, according to sources familiar with the deal. Theodore confirmed the round in a statement emphasizing the need for a regulated, institutional American platform rather than offshore, unregulated venues.

APEC plans to apply for a CFTC license to list perpetual futures — derivatives that let traders bet on asset prices without holding the assets, and with no set expiration date — specifically for equities and stock indexes, not cryptocurrencies. That regulatory ambition sets it apart from the offshore crypto venues where perps first became mainstream. The startup filed a presentation with the SEC outlining its plans.

Perpetual futures have exploded in relevance over the past year. The decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, one of the most profitable protocols in crypto, built its dominance largely on perps. The instruments gained fresh attention during the U.S.-Iran conflict, when traders used oil index perps on Hyperliquid around the clock while traditional exchanges sat dark. In May, prediction market Kalshi became the first U.S. firm to receive CFTC approval to list a true bitcoin perpetual, with CFTC Chairman Mike Selig calling it a historic step toward bringing one of crypto's most liquid market segments into the U.S. regulatory framework.

The family connection is hard to ignore. Sen. Gillibrand has been one of the crypto industry's most prominent Democratic allies — she co-introduced the Genius Act regulating stablecoins, which President Trump signed into law in July. Theodore, meanwhile, has been building crypto credentials of his own: before launching APEC, he was a fellow at Paradigm and an intern at Andreessen Horowitz, two of the most influential venture firms in the digital asset space.