Chicago prediction market startup Kairos raises $2.5M led by a16z Crypto

Chicago-based startup Kairos has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by a16z Crypto, as it launches a trading platform aimed at professional participants in prediction markets. The round included “participation from Geneva Trading, Illinois, @tier10k, and 20+ fantastic angels”, according to the company’s website. 

Prediction Markets have risen to prominence in the last couple of years, particularly when Kalshi, a “federally regulated derivatives exchange and clearinghouse, began offering contracts based on the outcome of political events” according to this deep insights page on the topic provided by KPMG, one of the “Big Four” professional services firms.

Jay Malavia, CEO of Kairos, noted in an article in Fortune, as part of the company’s PR blitz around the announcement that “there are not many times in history when you get an opportunity to shape an emerging industry. That’s what we’re building, and it really energizes us.”

Kairos positions itself as a unified execution and intelligence layer for prediction markets, combining real-time pricing, market data, news feeds, and low-latency order execution into a single terminal. According to their own blog post on the announcement, Malavia and his co-founder, Kairos CTO Zayd Alzein, said that the platform is designed to mirror the workflows of institutional trading desks, addressing what traders may describe as fragmented and operationally inefficient processes.

The platform aggregates market data, in an effort to enable execution across venues through a single interface. Speed and performance are their core design priorities, a reflection of the founding team’s background in quantitative research, high-frequency trading, and exchange infrastructure.

Beyond the trading terminal, Kairos plans to open its technology as an infrastructure layer for developers and other market participants. The company announcement described an ecosystem in which third parties can build applications on its platform, connecting traders, builders, and exchanges within a shared technical framework.