Elon Musk’s social media site X has named Polymarket as its “official prediction market partner” less than three weeks after Kalshi announced a deal with the platform — then issued a retraction.
In a brief post, the official X account said, “We’re joining forces with Polymarket as our official prediction market partner.”
In a post of its own, Polymarket added: “The next information age won’t be driven by the 20th century’s media monoliths — it’ll be driven by markets.
“Our partnership with @X marks a new chapter for truth on the internet.
“The future of news is optimized for truth, rooted in transparency, and anchored in reality.”
In a press release, the two businesses said they would work together to launch an “integrated product to deliver data-driven insights and recommendations to Polymarket.”
“Polymarket predictions will be combined with 𝕏 data to provide live insights, incorporating real-time annotations explaining market moves directly from Grok and relevant 𝕏 posts,” the press release said.
It did not specifically mention whether the deal was exclusive, which would prevent a later deal with a rival prediction market like Kalshi while it is active. However, use of the phrase “our prediction market partner” rather than one like “our first prediction market partner” suggests the deal is likely to be exclusive.
“Combining Polymarket’s accurate, unbiased, and real-time prediction market probabilities with Grok’s analysis and 𝕏’s real time insights will enable us to provide contextualized, data-driven insights to millions of Polymarket users around the world instantaneously,” Shayne Coplan, founder and CEO of Polymarket, said.
Kalshi snubbed?
The tie-up follows rival prediction market Kalshi claiming it had agreed to a deal with xAI, the artificial intelligence arm of X, best known for the Grok chatbot – only to retract its announcement hours later.
On May 20, Kalshi co-founder Tarek Mansour made a post on X that read, “No one has fought for truth harder than Elon Musk. He has inspired me at every step.
“I could not be more excited to announce Kalshi’s upcoming partnership with xAI to further take prediction markets mainstream. Together, we’ll shape the future of news and information.”
Bloomberg published details of the supposed partnership, saying xAI would “provide tailored information to offer guidance for bets” made by Kalshi users.
But within a matter of hours, Mansour deleted his post and Bloomberg retracted its story, reporting that Kalshi had rescinded its original statement about the deal.
“The company said details of the release, which stated that the effort would provide users with tailored information, had not been mutually confirmed between the two firms,” Bloomberg said at the time.
A day later, xAI addressed the situation, claiming it was “engaged in discussions” about partnerships with prediction markets but had not yet agreed to an official partnership.
Like Kalshi, Polymarket offers event contracts – where users can bet on the likelihood of a certain outcome – for both sports and non-sporting events like politics.
Unlike Kalshi, Polymarket is not registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates futures contracts in the U.S. Because it is not licensed, Polymarket blocks users from using U.S. IP addresses.
Last year, Bloomberg reported that the Department of Justice launched an investigation into the platform continuing to accept trades from Americans.
Both prediction exchanges offer a number of markets related to X and its owner, Musk.
A Kalshi spokesperson declined to comment on the deal.
