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This week: Pascal raises $9M to build prediction markets for “serious traders”

Also: BetHog CEO on shutting down the platform, and Solus Compliance’s founder on building an AI product that stops marketing and legal from fighting.

July 23, 2026

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Pascal raises $9M to build prediction markets for “serious traders”

The news: Prediction market startup Pascal raised a $9M Series A led by Union Square Ventures, bringing its total funding to $15M, Fortune reported last week. The New York-based platform positions itself closer to perpetual futures than to Kalshi or Polymarket, targeting serious traders and institutions with low fees and tools built for professionals rather than casual bettors. The round builds on a $6M seed raised last August from Wintermute Ventures and DBA.

Zoom in: Cofounders Ivo Crnkovic-Rubsamen (formerly a quant trader at Bridgewater and D.E. Shaw, then CEO of dYdX) and Matthew Downey built Pascal to cut "phantom fills," where trades appear to execute but never settle, and to give liquidity providers better incentives. "I would love to see a world where there are liquid markets for the types of risks that real businesses face and are interested in hedging," Crnkovic-Rubsamen told Fortune.

Why it matters: Pascal launched in June and remains in private beta, entering a market where Polymarket is valued at $15B and Kalshi at $22B—with Kalshi reportedly in talks to roughly double that figure. The space's rapid growth has drawn regulatory scrutiny and a wave of lawsuits over federal versus state oversight, the backdrop against which a new crop of trader-focused platforms like Pascal are trying to differentiate on execution rather than volume.

BetHog shuts down July 31 to go all-in on Sentient Studios’ AI dealers

The news: BetHog is shutting down its crypto sportsbook and casino on July 31, three months after raising $10M to develop AI-powered live dealers through its B2B spinoff, Sentient Studios. All 16 of BetHog's product and engineering staff will move to Sentient Studios along with the underlying technology, while roughly three marketing employees depart.

Zoom in: CEO Nigel Eccles tells BettingStartups the closure isn't about distress—BetHog does "low 10s of millions" in monthly handle and "would definitely be on the path to sustainability" with continued investment. The real driver is focus: "The real reason is we see a massive opportunity for Sentient Studio and we think to really deliver on it we need to focus."

Why it matters: The AI dealer category is already drawing competition, with Octane Studios launching a rival photorealistic-dealer platform last week. Eccles is betting the category gets decided on product, not distribution. "What is going to win out is great technology and a deep user focus"—a bet Sentient is backing with faster shipping (a second dealer, improved lip-sync, 15 languages) and a stated ambition to eventually "take over the bulk of the live dealer market."

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Solus Compliance raised £670K so that marketing and legal don't have to fight

The news: Solus Compliance has raised £670,000 to build an AI tool that reviews marketing content before it goes live, flagging missing disclaimers and mismatched terms and conditions before they bounce between marketing and legal teams. Founder Neil Dillon built the company after nine months back in gambling, following a decade away that included law training, an MBA, and a banking-tech stint using AI to scale a small commercial team.

Zoom in: The idea traces back to Dillon's time at Flutter, where he watched the same fight repeat: "It was just a process that I thought was completely broken." During the World Cup, one customer got FIFA's brand guidelines on a Friday night with creative already built—Solus reviewed roughly 120 assets, expanded into hundreds once resized, in minutes to an hour instead of the one to two weeks it would've taken manually.

Why it matters: Dillon is betting on consistency over raw capability, citing Harvard's "Jagged Frontier" research to argue frontier AI models can ace one task and flub the next—unacceptable when a regulator is checking your work. Solus is working with two unnamed tier-one operators across six countries and plans a $2M–$4M raise for Q4, with ambitions to expand beyond gambling into financial services, pharma, and food and beverage.

Listen to the full conversation with Dillon on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

News, money, and alpha 🗞️

Great gigs 💼

Big opportunities with awesome growth-stage companies, brought to you by BettingJobs.

  • 🆕 Novig is hiring a Product Designer to shape the core sports prediction market experience end-to-end, from concepting features to shipping polished interfaces. Union Square, NYC. (View job)

  • Pikkit is hiring a Player Development & Partnerships Manager to build relationships with its most engaged users and top operators' player development teams. Hybrid, New York City. (View job)

  • Establish The Run is hiring a part-time NFL Projections Analyst to review projections, flag player news and injury updates, and keep data current during the Thursday–Sunday workflow. Remote. (View job)

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