Are prediction markets becoming a news source?
Polymarket averaged 41M visits a month in 2026, more than Axios, and CNN, CNBC and the Wall Street Journal now publish Kalshi and Polymarket odds. Most of the trading is still sports: 80% of Kalshi's since mid-2024. Investors have valued the two companies at $22B and $21B.
Prediction markets are exchanges where people trade contracts on whether something will happen: an election result, a court ruling, a football match. A contract pays $1 if the event happens and nothing if it does not, so a price of 60 cents means the market puts the chance at 60%.
Two companies dominate the US market. Kalshi is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and has listed contracts on US elections since October 2024, after winning a court case against the regulator. Polymarket stopped serving Americans in 2022 and returned in December 2025 by buying a regulated exchange for $112M.
News organisations now publish their prices. CNN and CNBC show Kalshi's odds. The Wall Street Journal, Barron's and X show Polymarket's.
Polymarket averaged 41M visits a month in 2026, more than Axios
Estimated monthly web visits, average for January to July 2026.
Source: Dealroom.co
A visit is not a reader: the same sites are where people place their trades. The scale is still comparable. Polymarket draws about as many visits as The Hill, and Kalshi more than TechCrunch. Newsrooms now report the odds the way they report polls, for example on which party will control the Senate after November.
Combined visits in July 2026 were 25% above the 2024 election month
Monthly web visits.
Source: Dealroom.co
Most of that traffic is about sport. At the 2024 election, politics made up 90% of Kalshi's trading. Over July 2024 to April 2026 as a whole it was 4%, and sports was 80%. In one week in September, during the NFL season, Kalshi traded $15.3B. All the markets on November's midterm elections had traded $197M by July. Visits fell in August, once the World Cup was over.
The prices are not always a clean signal. One study estimated that a quarter of Polymarket's volume was wash trading, where the same traders sit on both sides of a trade to inflate activity. In April 2026 a US soldier became the first person charged with insider trading on a prediction market, for bets placed with classified information.
Since June 2025 investors have put $6.3B into Kalshi and Polymarket, almost all the venture money that has gone into prediction markets.
Prediction markets raised $6.4B in 2025–26, after about $50M a year
2025 includes ICE's $2B stake in Polymarket.
Source: Dealroom.co
Before 2025 no year brought in much more than $50M. In 2025 prediction-market startups raised $3.7B, 13% of all venture funding for US fintech companies that year. That includes $2B from Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, a strategic investment that Dealroom records as a venture round. Sports-betting exchanges such as Novig and ProphetX are not counted.
Kalshi rose from $2B to $22B and Polymarket from $1B to $21B
From each company’s first valuation above $500M. Bubble size shows capital raised.
Source: Dealroom.co
Kalshi's valuation rose 11-fold in 11 months and Polymarket's 21-fold in 14. Kalshi is reported to be in talks to raise at $40B. Kalshi's revenue grew from $24M in 2024 to $263.5M in 2025. Polymarket charged no trading fees until 2026.
Polymarket's four rounds were each led by one investor: Founders Fund, ICE twice and 1789 Capital. ICE's deal also made it the distributor of Polymarket's data to institutional investors. Kalshi's four rounds were each shared by several venture firms, with Sequoia and Paradigm in all of them.
General Catalyst is the only investor in both Kalshi and Polymarket
Kalshi30 investors
Coinbase Ventures
Morgan Stanley
a16z
CapitalG
Coatue
Sequoia
General CatalystBoth
Anthos Capital
ARK Invest
Ataria Ventures
Bond
Esas Ventures
IVP
JAM Fund
MANTIS
Neo
Rolls Chain Capital
SGH Capital
Soma Capital
Spark Capital
SV Angel
VentureSouq
Y Combinator
Paradigm
Multicoin Capital
Alex Bouaziz
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Henry Kravis
Justin Mateen
Peng ZhaoPolymarket25 investors
ICE (NYSE owner)
1789 CapitalGeneral CatalystBoth
Founders Fund
522 Ventures
Anti Fund
Ausum Ventures
Draper Associates
New Form Capital
P2 Ventures
Valor Equity Partners
Neptune Digital Assets
1confirmation
Dragonfly Capital Partners
ParaFi Capital
Polychain CapitalPpolygonventures.xyz
Robot Ventures
Dylan Field
Joe Gebbia
Kain Warwick
Kevin Hartz
Naval Ravikant
Tarun Chitra
Vitalik ButerinBold: led at least one round.
Source: Dealroom.co
Kalshi's backers are mostly venture firms, joined in 2026 by Morgan Stanley. Polymarket's mix venture firms such as Founders Fund with crypto funds, ICE and 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner. Trump Jr. also advises both companies: Kalshi since January 2025 and Polymarket since August 2025.
12 of 20 new prediction-market startups make tools for traders
Startups founded in 2024 or later with recorded funding, by what they do. Total raised.
Source: Dealroom.co
Half of the 176 prediction-market companies in Dealroom's data, 88, were founded in 2025 or 2026. Most are small. Of the 20 founded since 2024 that have raised money, 12 do not run a market: they sell brokerage, market data, trading terminals and execution to people who trade on Kalshi and Polymarket. Some, such as Oddpool and Adjacent Markets, package the odds themselves as data and indices.
What this means
By audience and distribution, prediction markets already work as a news source. Polymarket draws as many visits as a mid-sized US news site, and the odds of both companies reach readers through CNN, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal and X. ICE sells Polymarket's data to institutional investors.
As businesses they are mostly sports trading: 89% of Kalshi's fees in 2025 came from sports. States are contesting sports contracts in nearly 50 court cases, and New Jersey has asked the Supreme Court to decide whether states can regulate them. For newsrooms the open question is trust. A price moved by wash trades, or by someone who already knows the answer, is not information. The odds will keep their place in coverage only if the platforms can show that their prices are hard to manipulate.
Sources: Web traffic estimates are from Similarweb via Dealroom. The charts use Dealroom API data; the article also includes externally sourced context.
Methodology
Dealroom has no prediction-markets tag. The cohort is the 176 companies that Dealroom's semantic search returns for "prediction market" and "event contracts trading" and whose descriptions name prediction markets, event contracts or event outcomes, reviewed by hand. Funding is the sum of venture rounds by announcement year. Sports-betting exchanges are left out of the totals. Web visits are monthly estimates from Similarweb via Dealroom. Company valuations are the latest recorded round. Data pulled 2026-09-23.