Prediction Market Infrastructure: 12 Startups Building the Picks & Shovels
Prediction markets had their breakout year — Polymarket and Kalshi cleared record volumes, and the category crossed $20B in monthly turnover. But the loudest names are the venues. The real land-grab is quieter: the startups building the rails underneath — data, terminals, matching engines and credit — and most are still pre-token.
Wintermute put it bluntly this month: the prediction-market boom has an infrastructure problem. Fragmented data, slow tooling, no professional-grade APIs. So we went hunting for the teams fixing it. Ground rules: we skipped the big traded names (UMA, Chainlink) and the venues themselves, and kept only fresh, mostly pre-token builders. Inclusion isn't an endorsement — do your own research.
Here's the infrastructure map 👇
Data / API
1. Oddpool — Aggregates odds, orderbooks and arbitrage across every prediction venue into one searchable data layer for quants. Y Combinator (S26).
2. PredictionTalk — A prediction-markets hub tracking TVL, volume, fees and oracles across every major venue, updated continuously. Independent.
3. Adjacent — A data-and-news API surfacing 40,000+ markets and prediction indices, turning odds shifts into breaking news. Pre-seed, 2026.
4. Marketlens — Tick-level Polymarket orderbook history plus a Python backtesting SDK for quants building and testing real strategies. Independent.
Terminals / Execution
5. Kairos — Unified execution-and-intelligence terminal aggregating data, news and low-latency trades across venues. $2.5M, a16z crypto.
6. Verso — Bloomberg-style terminal with real-time data, AI news scoring and smart order routing across Polymarket and Kalshi. Y Combinator backed.
7. Fireplace — Institutional terminal aggregating markets, liquidity and execution, auto-routing orders to the deepest, best-priced venue. $1.5M pre-seed, Frachtis.
8. Converge — The first unified terminal letting traders watch and act across Polymarket, Kalshi and Limitless from one screen. Independent.
Protocols / Credit / Infra
9. Pascal — Core infrastructure powering the launch and operation of prediction-market platforms. $9M Series A, Union Square Ventures.
10. Kuest — Open-source protocol to launch and run your own prediction market. Independent · open-source.
11. OrderbookTrade — High-performance CLOB matching engine with on-chain settlement, launching markets instantly. Independent.
12. Dimes — Embedded credit letting any app offer leveraged prediction-market exposure via API. Independent.
The takeaway: everyone is trading on Polymarket. The smarter bet may be on who's building the layer beneath it — and unlike the venues, most of these are still early and pre-token.
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Nothing here is financial advice. Early-stage projects carry high risk — DYOR.