Pascal raises $9m to build institutional prediction markets
Prediction market startup Pascal has raised $9 million in a Series A led by Union Square Ventures to offer professional-grade event trading tools as the sector matures beyond retail betting.
Pascal, a New York-based prediction market startup, has raised $9 million in a Series A funding round led by Union Square Ventures. The capital injection will support the company's effort to build an event-trading platform targeted specifically at institutional investors and professional traders.
The company was co-founded by Ivo Crnkovic-Rubsamen and Matthew Downey, two veterans of sophisticated trading environments. Crnkovic-Rubsamen previously worked as a quantitative trader at Bridgewater Associates and D.E. before becoming CEO of crypto derivatives exchange dYdX in 2024. Downey brings extensive experience in high-frequency crypto trading.
Their pedigree points to a broader institutionalization of prediction markets, a sector historically dominated by retail participants. Pascal is designed to function more like perpetual futures than a standard betting exchange. The platform promises lower fees, faster execution, and technical fixes for issues like "phantom fills," where trades appear to execute but fail to settle.
The founders' ultimate goal is to translate the mechanics of prediction markets into tools for corporate risk management. “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 said.
Pascal enters a highly competitive arena at a moment of explosive growth. The sector's dominant players, Polymarket and Kalshi, have achieved staggering valuations of $15 billion and $22 billion respectively. Kalshi is reportedly in talks to raise new funding that could roughly double its valuation, and individual event contracts now regularly see billions of dollars in trading volume.
However, rapid expansion has brought significant legal and regulatory headwinds. Despite Kalshi securing approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2020, the industry is now navigating a wave of lawsuits. The core legal dispute centers on whether prediction markets should be regulated as federal financial derivatives or state-by-state gambling operations.
Pascal launched in June and remains in a private beta phase. The company declined to disclose its current trading volumes or the valuation of the Series A round. The new funding builds on a $6 million seed round raised in August of last year from Wintermute Ventures and DBA.
