Can Pascal Take On Prediction Market Giants Kalshi and Polymarket?
This week’s World Cup finals feature no underdogs. Argentina and Spain, two of the four best-ranked teams on the planet, are close to the ultimate trophy. But in the industry, those matches happen to be fueling a different kind of matchup that has just started, and this one has a real challenger walking onto the field.
A New York startup called Pascal announced a $9 million Series A round led by Union Square Ventures. The goal: take a slice of a market currently split almost entirely between two names, Kalshi and Polymarket.
What Are Prediction Markets, Exactly?
If the term is new to you, prediction markets are platforms where people trade contracts tied to real-world outcomes: who wins an election, what a central bank decides, or which team lifts a trophy. Prices move the way a stock chart does, rising or falling as fresh information changes what people think is likely to happen next.
Kalshi and Polymarket: The Two Names Everyone Knows
Two platforms dominate the space right now.
Kalshi operates under U.S. regulatory approval, while Polymarket built most of its user base abroad. Both have grown from a niche corner of finance into a serious industry in a short span. Polymarket is currently valued at $15 billion; Kalshi at $22 billion, and is reportedly in talks to raise new funding that could roughly double that figure.
Together, the two cover almost everything: crypto prices, sports results, award shows, elections. And lately, one event in particular has kept both platforms unusually busy.
The World Cup Effect
As we covered in our reporting on this year’s tournament, the 2026 World Cup’s expanded format, more matches, more storylines, more ways for fans to get involved, pushed trading volume to record levels. Kalshi processed more than $31 billion in June alone, while Polymarket’s international exchange logged a record $10.8 billion for the month. Its “World Cup Winner” market has moved billions in volume on its own.
That kind of growth is exactly what draws new entrants like Pascal into the game.
So What Is Pascal, Exactly?
Pascal isn’t trying to out-market Kalshi or out-scale Polymarket.
It’s building something closer to perpetual futures, a trading structure usually reserved for institutional players, and aiming it at professional traders rather than fans checking scores between matches. The company says it wants lower fees, faster execution, and fewer “phantom fills,” cases where a trade looks like it went through but never actually settles.
Cofounder Ivo Crnkovic-Rubsamen, a former quantitative trader at Bridgewater Associates and D.E. Shaw who went on to run crypto exchange dYdX, sums up the ambition simply: he wants “liquid markets for the types of risks that real businesses face.”
His co-founder, Matthew Downey, brings a background in high-frequency crypto trading. Pascal launched in June, remains in private beta, and hasn’t shared any trading numbers yet. This new round builds on a $6 million seed raised last August from Wintermute Ventures and DBA.
A Crowded Field With Legal Headaches
Growth this fast tends to attract more than investors. Prediction markets’ resemblance to gambling sites has already triggered a wave of lawsuits across the U.S. over whether they belong under federal oversigth or should be handled state by state. Any new entrant, Pascal included, will have to work around that uncertainty while still trying to win traders over.
The Real Question
Two giants, one newcomer, and a sector that just posted its biggest month on record thanks to a World Cup final four with zero surprises. Whether Pascal can turn a solid pitch into real trading volume is the one outcome nobody can price in just yet.