This week: Data startup Oddpool acquired by Kalshi after $3M raise

Also: PredictQ’s plan to chase the 70% of traders who lose and leave, and Novig’s first national brand campaign with Sydney Sweeney.

September 10, 2026

Data startup Oddpool acquired by Kalshi after $3M raise

The news: Oddpool, the prediction market data startup co-founded by Avi Arora and Ritesh Malpani, is joining Kalshi. The pair came out of Y Combinator this past spring and raised a $3M seed, using it to build the data layer that helps institutions, economists, and policymakers treat prediction markets as a real asset class.

Zoom in: Arora framed the bet on prediction markets around the information they generate in a LinkedIn post. "Every trade is a signal and has a piece of information embedded in it. And it's a signal that is sourced from millions of participants rather than a committee." The decision to join Kalshi came after conversations with Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour convinced the founders they could build faster from inside the ecosystem than as an outside partner, Arora said.

Why it matters: Kalshi absorbing a data-infrastructure team signals the exchange is moving to build institutional-grade tooling in-house rather than lean on third parties—a tell that prediction markets are maturing from a retail curiosity into something economists and business owners want to price off of. As demand for this data grows, expect the exchanges themselves to keep pulling that capability closer.

PredictQ is chasing the 70% of prediction market traders who lose and leave

The news: RotoGrinders co-founder Cameron MacMillan and DFS veteran Justin Herzig have launched PredictQ, a content, tools, and community platform built to be the "expert layer" for prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket. The company raised $500,000, closing 20% oversubscribed, and is organized around the four stages of a trader's cycle—discovery, research, price and platform, and portfolio management—starting with an affiliate model that deep-links traders out to exchanges.

Zoom in: The interesting part is who PredictQ isn't chasing. Herzig counts more than thirty companies building the "Bloomberg for prediction markets" for professional traders, and wants the opposite crowd. "No one is going after that seventy percent of traders I mentioned who lose and leave," he said—the retail market he and MacMillan know best from their DFS years.

Why it matters: Every major trading market eventually grows an expert layer — RotoGrinders for DFS, Seeking Alpha and TradingView for equities — and prediction markets, now sitting on regulatory clarity and billions in volume, still don't have one. PredictQ is betting it can be that layer, leaning on prediction markets' open trading histories to build verifiable track records the way PFF grades a player. The near-term goal, in Herzig's words: twelve months from now, you can't be serious about prediction markets without a PredictQ account.

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Novig taps Sydney Sweeney in first national ad campaign

The news: Novig has launched its first national brand campaign with star actress Sydney Sweeney, timed to the kickoff of the 2026-27 NFL season. The 21+ sports prediction market, which recently secured CFTC approval, is leaning on Sweeney's star power to introduce itself to mainstream sports fans.

Zoom in: Sweeney is more than a hired face here—she’s an equity partner that’s been in the creative from the very beginning. "Being able to be a part of watching this company grow and not just be the face of it is really important to me," she told Complex. Speaking to WSJ, Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky spoke to the regulatory gap and shrugged off the bet-versus-trade debate. “People get so caught up in the semantics, and what we're really trying to focus on is the structure, the actual product," Fortinsky said.

Why it matters: The CFTC route is fast becoming the prediction-market industry's end-run around state gambling regulation, and pairing it with a celebrity-fronted blitz across TV, streaming, paid social and out-of-home, amplified to Sweeney's tens of millions of followers, shows how aggressively these platforms are chasing mainstream bettors while sidestepping the sportsbook rulebook. Expect the tension over what counts as "gambling" to only sharpen as the money and marketing scale up.

  • ProphetX is hiring a Director of Solutions Engineering to own all B2B partner integrations—from technical discovery through go-live at the CFTC-regulated sports prediction market. Remote (USA). (View job)

  • PredictQ is hiring for its content team this NFL season (View job)

  • Griddy is hiring a Head of Content Partnerships to build out and run its creator network ahead of NFL season. (View job)

  • 🆕 BettingJobs is working with a fast-growing B2B iGaming technology provider to appoint a Chief Technology Officer. (View job)

Looking for your next key hire or role? Connect with Betting Jobs at G2E Las Vegas. Contact Carla Souter or Jennifer Innes to get in touch.

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