News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers
NEW YORK (AP) -- Calls are increasing inside Congress for investigations into the prediction market platform Polymarket after the latest instance where groups of anonymous traders made strategic, well-timed bets on a major geopolitical event hours before it occurred. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire late Tuesday on social media. These were the sole bets made on Polymarket through these accounts. In January, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit by betting that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, hours before Maduro was captured. In the hours before the start of the Iran war, another account made roughly $550,000 in a series of trades effectively betting that the U.S. would strike Iran and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office. Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as the subcommittee on digital assets and financial technology, sent a letter Thursday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission demanding the regulator review and investigate these well-timed trades. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, which includes prediction markets. "This pattern raises serious concerns that certain market participants may have had access to material nonpublic information regarding a market-moving geopolitical event," Torres wrote. The letter was shared exclusively with The AP. "What is the statistical likelihood that of anyone other than an insider trader placing a winning bet 12 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement," Torres said in an interview with AP. "There are two answers: God, or an insider trader. And something tells me that God it not placing bets around Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. " Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow their users to bet on everything from whether it will rain in Phoenix, Arizona next week to whether the Federal Reserve will raise or lower interest rates. U.S. residents are barred from using Polymarket under both its terms of service and federal law, though Polymarket's crypto-based design and limited identity checks can make those restrictions hard to police. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain why it continues to allow trades on war and violence as well as whether the company is making any efforts to keep insiders from trading on the platform. "Polymarket has become an illicit market to sell and exploit national security secrets unlike any in history, and by extension a potential honeypot for foreign intelligence services watching for those same suspicious bets and wagers," Blumenthal wrote. Republicans have also criticized these platforms and called for bans on these sorts of bets. There are at least two bills pending in Congress co-signed by both parties, one in the House and one in the Senate. "We don't want to imagine a world where America's adversaries use prediction markets to anticipate our next move," said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, after the release of the AP's findings on the ceasefire wagers. Polymarket did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The stakes are high for both Kalshi and Polymarket as they seek approval to operate in the U.S. and nationwide, particularly in the lucrative sports betting market. Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022 and has moved to reenter the country by acquiring a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, giving it a legal pathway to start offering contracts domestically. The company has begun a limited rollout in the U.S. while at the same time continuing to operate a separate, crypto-based platform offshore that remains outside U.S. jurisdiction. That platform will account for most of its activity. Kalshi, which is already regulated in the U.S., and its executives have a goal of making the company the nation's dominant prediction market. Kalshi has also leaned heavily into sports, which critics have said effectively makes it a sports betting platform that dabbles in event-based contracts on the side. Both companies have also announced partnerships with sports teams and even news organizations to broaden their reach as well. The competition also carries political overtones. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, and separately serves as a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers
Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year.
CFO Anthony Armstrong leaves xAI, the Information reports
April 9 - Anthony Armstrong, named xAI's CFO in October, has departed the company as part of a broader wave of senior exits, the Information reported on Thursday, citing two people familiar with the matter. Armstrong, who previously worked as a Morgan Stanley banker and advised Elon Musk during the acquisition of social media platform X, was reporting to Bret Johnsen, the Information had reported in February. Johnsen was the finance chief of the combined company following xAI and SpaceX's record-setting merger. xAI did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment. Armstrong was leading the finance operations for both xAI and X, the Financial Times had reported in October. He was responsible for steering the social media business back to financial stability following an exodus of advertisers after Musk relaxed its content moderation standards, the report said. SpaceX is planning a highly anticipated initial public offering seeking to raise $75 billion, valuing the space company at as much as $1.75 trillion, Reuters has previously reported. It outlined details of the IPO at a meeting with its team of bankers on Monday, telling them it plans to earmark a large portion of shares for retail investors and will host 1,500 of them at an event in June.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers
NEW YORK (AP) -- Calls are increasing inside Congress for investigations into the prediction market platform Polymarket after the latest instance where groups of anonymous traders made strategic, well-timed bets on a major geopolitical event hours before it occurred. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire late Tuesday on social media. These were the sole bets made on Polymarket through these accounts. In January, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit by betting that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, hours before Maduro was captured. In the hours before the start of the Iran war, another account made roughly $550,000 in a series of trades effectively betting that the U.S. would strike Iran and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office. Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as the subcommittee on digital assets and financial technology, sent a letter Thursday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission demanding the regulator review and investigate these well-timed trades. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, which includes prediction markets. "This pattern raises serious concerns that certain market participants may have had access to material nonpublic information regarding a market-moving geopolitical event," Torres wrote. The letter was shared exclusively with The AP. "What is the statistical likelihood that of anyone other than an insider trader placing a winning bet 12 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement," Torres said in an interview with AP. "There are two answers: God, or an insider trader. And something tells me that God it not placing bets around Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. " Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow their users to bet on everything from whether it will rain in Phoenix, Arizona next week to whether the Federal Reserve will raise or lower interest rates. U.S. residents are barred from using Polymarket under both its terms of service and federal law, though Polymarket's crypto-based design and limited identity checks can make those restrictions hard to police. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain why it continues to allow trades on war and violence as well as whether the company is making any efforts to keep insiders from trading on the platform. "Polymarket has become an illicit market to sell and exploit national security secrets unlike any in history, and by extension a potential honeypot for foreign intelligence services watching for those same suspicious bets and wagers," Blumenthal wrote. Republicans have also criticized these platforms and called for bans on these sorts of bets. There are at least two bills pending in Congress co-signed by both parties, one in the House and one in the Senate. "We don't want to imagine a world where America's adversaries use prediction markets to anticipate our next move," said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, after the release of the AP's findings on the ceasefire wagers. Polymarket did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The stakes are high for both Kalshi and Polymarket as they seek approval to operate in the U.S. and nationwide, particularly in the lucrative sports betting market. Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022 and has moved to reenter the country by acquiring a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, giving it a legal pathway to start offering contracts domestically. The company has begun a limited rollout in the U.S. while at the same time continuing to operate a separate, crypto-based platform offshore that remains outside U.S. jurisdiction. That platform will account for most of its activity. Kalshi, which is already regulated in the U.S., and its executives have a goal of making the company the nation's dominant prediction market. Kalshi has also leaned heavily into sports, which critics have said effectively makes it a sports betting platform that dabbles in event-based contracts on the side. Both companies have also announced partnerships with sports teams and even news organizations to broaden their reach as well. The competition also carries political overtones. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, and separately serves as a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers
NEW YORK (AP) -- Calls are increasing inside Congress for investigations into the prediction market platform Polymarket after the latest instance where groups of anonymous traders made strategic, well-timed bets on a major geopolitical event hours before it occurred. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire late Tuesday on social media. These were the sole bets made on Polymarket through these accounts. In January, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit by betting that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, hours before Maduro was captured. In the hours before the start of the Iran war, another account made roughly $550,000 in a series of trades effectively betting that the U.S. would strike Iran and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as the subcommittee on digital assets and financial technology, sent a letter Thursday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission demanding the regulator review and investigate these well-timed trades. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, which includes prediction markets. "This pattern raises serious concerns that certain market participants may have had access to material nonpublic information regarding a market-moving geopolitical event," Torres wrote. The letter was shared exclusively with The AP. "What is the statistical likelihood that of anyone other than an insider trader placing a winning bet 12 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement," Torres said in an interview with AP. "There are two answers: God, or an insider trader. And something tells me that God it not placing bets around Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. " Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow their users to bet on everything from whether it will rain in Phoenix, Arizona next week to whether the Federal Reserve will raise or lower interest rates. U.S. residents are barred from using Polymarket under both its terms of service and federal law, though Polymarket's crypto-based design and limited identity checks can make those restrictions hard to police. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain why it continues to allow trades on war and violence as well as whether the company is making any efforts to keep insiders from trading on the platform. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW "Polymarket has become an illicit market to sell and exploit national security secrets unlike any in history, and by extension a potential honeypot for foreign intelligence services watching for those same suspicious bets and wagers," Blumenthal wrote. Republicans have also criticized these platforms and called for bans on these sorts of bets. There are at least two bills pending in Congress co-signed by both parties, one in the House and one in the Senate. "We don't want to imagine a world where America's adversaries use prediction markets to anticipate our next move," said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, after the release of the AP's findings on the ceasefire wagers. Polymarket did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The stakes are high for both Kalshi and Polymarket as they seek approval to operate in the U.S. and nationwide, particularly in the lucrative sports betting market. Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022 and has moved to reenter the country by acquiring a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, giving it a legal pathway to start offering contracts domestically. The company has begun a limited rollout in the U.S. while at the same time continuing to operate a separate, crypto-based platform offshore that remains outside U.S. jurisdiction. That platform will account for most of its activity. Kalshi, which is already regulated in the U.S., and its executives have a goal of making the company the nation's dominant prediction market. Kalshi has also leaned heavily into sports, which critics have said effectively makes it a sports betting platform that dabbles in event-based contracts on the side. Both companies have also announced partnerships with sports teams and even news organizations to broaden their reach as well. The competition also carries political overtones. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, and separately serves as a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers
NEW YORK (AP) -- Calls are increasing inside Congress for investigations into the prediction market platform Polymarket after the latest instance where groups of anonymous traders made strategic, well-timed bets on a major geopolitical event hours before it occurred. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire late Tuesday on social media. These were the sole bets made on Polymarket through these accounts. In January, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit by betting that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, hours before Maduro was captured. In the hours before the start of the Iran war, another account made roughly $550,000 in a series of trades effectively betting that the U.S. would strike Iran and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office. Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as the subcommittee on digital assets and financial technology, sent a letter Thursday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission demanding the regulator review and investigate these well-timed trades. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, which includes prediction markets. "This pattern raises serious concerns that certain market participants may have had access to material nonpublic information regarding a market-moving geopolitical event," Torres wrote. The letter was shared exclusively with The AP. "What is the statistical likelihood that of anyone other than an insider trader placing a winning bet 12 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement," Torres said in an interview with AP. "There are two answers: God, or an insider trader. And something tells me that God it not placing bets around Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. " Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow their users to bet on everything from whether it will rain in Phoenix, Arizona next week to whether the Federal Reserve will raise or lower interest rates. U.S. residents are barred from using Polymarket under both its terms of service and federal law, though Polymarket's crypto-based design and limited identity checks can make those restrictions hard to police. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain why it continues to allow trades on war and violence as well as whether the company is making any efforts to keep insiders from trading on the platform. "Polymarket has become an illicit market to sell and exploit national security secrets unlike any in history, and by extension a potential honeypot for foreign intelligence services watching for those same suspicious bets and wagers," Blumenthal wrote. Republicans have also criticized these platforms and called for bans on these sorts of bets. There are at least two bills pending in Congress co-signed by both parties, one in the House and one in the Senate. "We don't want to imagine a world where America's adversaries use prediction markets to anticipate our next move," said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, after the release of the AP's findings on the ceasefire wagers. Polymarket did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The stakes are high for both Kalshi and Polymarket as they seek approval to operate in the U.S. and nationwide, particularly in the lucrative sports betting market. Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022 and has moved to reenter the country by acquiring a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, giving it a legal pathway to start offering contracts domestically. The company has begun a limited rollout in the U.S. while at the same time continuing to operate a separate, crypto-based platform offshore that remains outside U.S. jurisdiction. That platform will account for most of its activity. Kalshi, which is already regulated in the U.S., and its executives have a goal of making the company the nation's dominant prediction market. Kalshi has also leaned heavily into sports, which critics have said effectively makes it a sports betting platform that dabbles in event-based contracts on the side. Both companies have also announced partnerships with sports teams and even news organizations to broaden their reach as well. The competition also carries political overtones. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, and separately serves as a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers
NEW YORK (AP) -- Calls are increasing inside Congress for investigations into the prediction market platform Polymarket after the latest instance where groups of anonymous traders made strategic, well-timed bets on a major geopolitical event hours before it occurred. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire late Tuesday on social media. These were the sole bets made on Polymarket through these accounts. In January, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit by betting that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, hours before Maduro was captured. In the hours before the start of the Iran war, another account made roughly $550,000 in a series of trades effectively betting that the U.S. would strike Iran and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office. Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as the subcommittee on digital assets and financial technology, sent a letter Thursday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission demanding the regulator review and investigate these well-timed trades. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, which includes prediction markets. "This pattern raises serious concerns that certain market participants may have had access to material nonpublic information regarding a market-moving geopolitical event," Torres wrote. The letter was shared exclusively with The AP. "What is the statistical likelihood that of anyone other than an insider trader placing a winning bet 12 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement," Torres said in an interview with AP. "There are two answers: God, or an insider trader. And something tells me that God it not placing bets around Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. " Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow their users to bet on everything from whether it will rain in Phoenix, Arizona next week to whether the Federal Reserve will raise or lower interest rates. U.S. residents are barred from using Polymarket under both its terms of service and federal law, though Polymarket's crypto-based design and limited identity checks can make those restrictions hard to police. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain why it continues to allow trades on war and violence as well as whether the company is making any efforts to keep insiders from trading on the platform. "Polymarket has become an illicit market to sell and exploit national security secrets unlike any in history, and by extension a potential honeypot for foreign intelligence services watching for those same suspicious bets and wagers," Blumenthal wrote. Republicans have also criticized these platforms and called for bans on these sorts of bets. There are at least two bills pending in Congress co-signed by both parties, one in the House and one in the Senate. "We don't want to imagine a world where America's adversaries use prediction markets to anticipate our next move," said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, after the release of the AP's findings on the ceasefire wagers. Polymarket did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The stakes are high for both Kalshi and Polymarket as they seek approval to operate in the U.S. and nationwide, particularly in the lucrative sports betting market. Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022 and has moved to reenter the country by acquiring a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, giving it a legal pathway to start offering contracts domestically. The company has begun a limited rollout in the U.S. while at the same time continuing to operate a separate, crypto-based platform offshore that remains outside U.S. jurisdiction. That platform will account for most of its activity. Kalshi, which is already regulated in the U.S., and its executives have a goal of making the company the nation's dominant prediction market. Kalshi has also leaned heavily into sports, which critics have said effectively makes it a sports betting platform that dabbles in event-based contracts on the side. Both companies have also announced partnerships with sports teams and even news organizations to broaden their reach as well. The competition also carries political overtones. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, and separately serves as a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers
NEW YORK (AP) -- Calls are increasing inside Congress for investigations into the prediction market platform Polymarket after the latest instance where groups of anonymous traders made strategic, well-timed bets on a major geopolitical event hours before it occured. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire late Tuesday on social media. These were the sole bets made on Polymarket through these accounts. In January, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit by betting that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, hours before Maduro was captured. In the hours before the start of the Iran war, another account made roughly $550,000 in a series of trades effectively betting that the U.S. would strike Iran and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office. Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as the subcommittee on digital assets and financial technology, sent a letter Thursday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission demanding the regulator review and investigate these well-timed trades. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, which includes prediction markets. "This pattern raises serious concerns that certain market participants may have had access to material nonpublic information regarding a market-moving geopolitical event," Torres wrote. The letter was shared exclusively with The AP. "What is the statistical likelihood that of anyone other than an insider trader placing a winning bet 12 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement," Torres said in an interview with AP. "There are two answers: God, or an insider trader. And something tells me that God it not placing bets around Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. " Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow their users to bet on everything from whether it will rain in Phoenix, Arizona next week to whether the Federal Reserve will raise or lower interest rates. U.S. residents are barred from using Polymarket under both its terms of service and federal law, though Polymarket's crypto-based design and limited identity checks can make those restrictions hard to police. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain why it continues to allow trades on war and violence as well as whether the company is making any efforts to keep insiders from trading on the platform. "Polymarket has become an illicit market to sell and exploit national security secrets unlike any in history, and by extension a potential honeypot for foreign intelligence services watching for those same suspicious bets and wagers," Blumenthal wrote. Republicans have also criticized these platforms and called for bans on these sorts of bets. There are at least two bills pending in Congress co-signed by both parties, one in the House and one in the Senate. "We don't want to imagine a world where America's adversaries use prediction markets to anticipate our next move," said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, after the release of the AP's findings on the ceasefire wagers. Polymarket did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The stakes are high for both Kalshi and Polymarket as they seek approval to operate in the U.S. and nationwide, particularly in the lucrative sports betting market. Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022 and has moved to reenter the country by acquiring a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, giving it a legal pathway to start offering contracts domestically. The company has begun a limited rollout in the U.S. while at the same time continuing to operate a separate, crypto-based platform offshore that remains outside U.S. jurisdiction. That platform will account for most of its activity. Kalshi, which is already regulated in the U.S., and its executives have a goal of making the company the nation's dominant prediction market. Kalshi has also leaned heavily into sports, which critics have said effectively makes it a sports betting platform that dabbles in event-based contracts on the side. Both companies have also announced partnerships with sports teams and even news organizations to broaden their reach as well. The competition also carries political overtones. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, and separately serves as a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi.
Anthropic Launches Managed Agents to Run Enterprise AI Workloads
Anthropic has released Claude Managed Agents, a suite of composable APIs that lets businesses build and deploy cloud-hosted AI agents without managing their own infrastructure. The service, now in public beta on the Claude Platform, handles sandboxing, state management, credential handling, and tool execution so engineering teams can focus on agent logic rather than operational overhead. The launch marks Anthropic's most direct move into the enterprise platform market. Rather than selling model access alone, the company is now offering to run the full agent stack - positioning itself as a managed runtime provider for autonomous AI work. Building a production-grade AI agent typically requires months of infrastructure work: sandboxed code execution, checkpointing, credential management, scoped permissions, and end-to-end tracing. Managed Agents abstracts all of that into a hosted service. Developers define an agent's tasks, tools, and guardrails. Anthropic's built-in orchestration harness then decides when to call tools, how to manage context across long sessions, and how to recover from errors. Sessions can run autonomously for hours, with progress persisting even through disconnections. The engineering blog post accompanying the launch describes the core architecture as a separation of three components: the "brain" (Claude and its harness), the "hands" (sandboxes and tools), and the "session" (a durable event log). Each component can fail or be replaced independently. If a container dies, the harness catches it as a tool-call error and spins up a new one. If the harness itself crashes, a new instance can resume from the last recorded event. Security is handled through structural separation. Credentials never live in the sandbox where Claude's generated code runs. For Git operations, access tokens are injected during sandbox initialization but stay outside the agent's reach. For external services connected via the Model Context Protocol (MCP), OAuth tokens sit in a secure vault and are accessed through a proxy. The system also includes multi-agent coordination (currently in research preview), where agents can spawn and direct other agents to parallelize complex work. Several companies have already integrated Managed Agents into production workflows. Notion embedded Claude directly into workspaces through Custom Agents, letting teams delegate coding, presentations, and spreadsheets without leaving the app. Rakuten deployed specialist agents across product, sales, marketing, and finance within a week per deployment, connecting them to Slack and Teams. Asana built AI Teammates that work alongside humans inside projects, with CTO Amritansh Raghav stating that Managed Agents helped them ship advanced capabilities faster. Sentry connected its debugging tool Seer to a Claude-powered agent that writes patches and opens pull requests, going from flagged bug to reviewable fix in a single flow. Atlassian is building agents that let developers assign tasks directly from Jira. Pricing is consumption-based: standard Claude API token rates apply, plus $0.08 per session-hour for active runtime. According to the official documentation, the service requires a specific beta header () that the SDK sets automatically. The launch extends Anthropic's pattern of building developer infrastructure around Claude. Over the past year, the company has released Claude Cowork, brought Claude Code to Slack for in-chat development, added desktop control capabilities, and established a skills framework that has become widely adopted. Managed Agents consolidates that trajectory into a single hosted offering that competes directly with custom AI agent infrastructure. The open question is whether enterprises will hand full agent runtime to a single AI vendor. The $0.08-per-hour pricing is low enough to undercut most in-house infrastructure costs, but organizations running sensitive workloads may hesitate to route all agent activity through Anthropic's servers. Managed Agents' support for connecting to customer VPCs addresses part of that concern, but the "brain" - Claude and its harness - still runs on Anthropic's infrastructure.
OpenAI halves its Pro price to $100 for heavy Codex users, undercuts Anthropic and Google
OpenAI is reshuffling its subscription tiers with a new $100-per-month Pro plan designed for people who rely heavily on its Codex programming tool. The new Pro tier costs half of what the old $200 plan did and offers five times more Codex usage than the $20 Plus plan. OpenAI says the new Pro plan is built for users who need longer, more involved Codex sessions. At the same time, the company is tweaking Codex usage on the Plus plan so sessions are spread more evenly throughout the week instead of being burned through in a single day. According to OpenAI, the Plus plan at $20 per month is still the best value for everyday Codex usage, while the new Pro tier gives heavy users a more affordable way to step up. The new pricing also significantly undercuts Pro-level offerings from Anthropic and Google, which start at $200 and up. The old $200 Pro tier still exists as the "highest usage option for those who need even greater capacity," but it's no longer listed on the pricing page, suggesting OpenAI may be quietly phasing it out. The exact difference in usage between the $200 Pro and the new $100 Pro tier isn't entirely clear yet.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers
NEW YORK (AP) -- Calls are increasing inside Congress for investigations into the prediction market platform Polymarket after the latest instance where groups of anonymous traders made strategic, well-timed bets on a major geopolitical event hours before it occurred. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire late Tuesday on social media. These were the sole bets made on Polymarket through these accounts. In January, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit by betting that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, hours before Maduro was captured. In the hours before the start of the Iran war, another account made roughly $550,000 in a series of trades effectively betting that the U.S. would strike Iran and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office. Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as the subcommittee on digital assets and financial technology, sent a letter Thursday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission demanding the regulator review and investigate these well-timed trades. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, which includes prediction markets. "This pattern raises serious concerns that certain market participants may have had access to material nonpublic information regarding a market-moving geopolitical event," Torres wrote. The letter was shared exclusively with The AP. "What is the statistical likelihood that of anyone other than an insider trader placing a winning bet 12 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement," Torres said in an interview with AP. "There are two answers: God, or an insider trader. And something tells me that God it not placing bets around Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. " Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow their users to bet on everything from whether it will rain in Phoenix, Arizona next week to whether the Federal Reserve will raise or lower interest rates. U.S. residents are barred from using Polymarket under both its terms of service and federal law, though Polymarket's crypto-based design and limited identity checks can make those restrictions hard to police. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain why it continues to allow trades on war and violence as well as whether the company is making any efforts to keep insiders from trading on the platform. "Polymarket has become an illicit market to sell and exploit national security secrets unlike any in history, and by extension a potential honeypot for foreign intelligence services watching for those same suspicious bets and wagers," Blumenthal wrote. Republicans have also criticized these platforms and called for bans on these sorts of bets. There are at least two bills pending in Congress co-signed by both parties, one in the House and one in the Senate. "We don't want to imagine a world where America's adversaries use prediction markets to anticipate our next move," said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, after the release of the AP's findings on the ceasefire wagers. Polymarket did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The stakes are high for both Kalshi and Polymarket as they seek approval to operate in the U.S. and nationwide, particularly in the lucrative sports betting market. Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022 and has moved to reenter the country by acquiring a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, giving it a legal pathway to start offering contracts domestically. The company has begun a limited rollout in the U.S. while at the same time continuing to operate a separate, crypto-based platform offshore that remains outside U.S. jurisdiction. That platform will account for most of its activity. Kalshi, which is already regulated in the U.S., and its executives have a goal of making the company the nation's dominant prediction market. Kalshi has also leaned heavily into sports, which critics have said effectively makes it a sports betting platform that dabbles in event-based contracts on the side. Both companies have also announced partnerships with sports teams and even news organizations to broaden their reach as well. The competition also carries political overtones. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, and separately serves as a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers
Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers
NEW YORK (AP) -- Calls are increasing inside Congress for investigations into the prediction market platform Polymarket after the latest instance where groups of anonymous traders made strategic, well-timed bets on a major geopolitical event hours before it occured. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire late Tuesday on social media. These were the sole bets made on Polymarket through these accounts. In January, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit by betting that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, hours before Maduro was captured. In the hours before the start of the Iran war, another account made roughly $550,000 in a series of trades effectively betting that the U.S. would strike Iran and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office. Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as the subcommittee on digital assets and financial technology, sent a letter Thursday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission demanding the regulator review and investigate these well-timed trades. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, which includes prediction markets. "This pattern raises serious concerns that certain market participants may have had access to material nonpublic information regarding a market-moving geopolitical event," Torres wrote. The letter was shared exclusively with The AP. "What is the statistical likelihood that of anyone other than an insider trader placing a winning bet 12 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement," Torres said in an interview with AP. "There are two answers: God, or an insider trader. And something tells me that God it not placing bets around Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. " Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow their users to bet on everything from whether it will rain in Phoenix, Arizona next week to whether the Federal Reserve will raise or lower interest rates. U.S. residents are barred from using Polymarket under both its terms of service and federal law, though Polymarket's crypto-based design and limited identity checks can make those restrictions hard to police. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain why it continues to allow trades on war and violence as well as whether the company is making any efforts to keep insiders from trading on the platform. "Polymarket has become an illicit market to sell and exploit national security secrets unlike any in history, and by extension a potential honeypot for foreign intelligence services watching for those same suspicious bets and wagers," Blumenthal wrote. Republicans have also criticized these platforms and called for bans on these sorts of bets. There are at least two bills pending in Congress co-signed by both parties, one in the House and one in the Senate. "We don't want to imagine a world where America's adversaries use prediction markets to anticipate our next move," said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, after the release of the AP's findings on the ceasefire wagers. Polymarket did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The stakes are high for both Kalshi and Polymarket as they seek approval to operate in the U.S. and nationwide, particularly in the lucrative sports betting market. Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022 and has moved to reenter the country by acquiring a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, giving it a legal pathway to start offering contracts domestically. The company has begun a limited rollout in the U.S. while at the same time continuing to operate a separate, crypto-based platform offshore that remains outside U.S. jurisdiction. That platform will account for most of its activity. Kalshi, which is already regulated in the U.S., and its executives have a goal of making the company the nation's dominant prediction market. Kalshi has also leaned heavily into sports, which critics have said effectively makes it a sports betting platform that dabbles in event-based contracts on the side. Both companies have also announced partnerships with sports teams and even news organizations to broaden their reach as well. The competition also carries political overtones. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, and separately serves as a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers
NEW YORK (AP) -- Calls are increasing inside Congress for investigations into the prediction market platform Polymarket after the latest instance where groups of anonymous traders made strategic, well-timed bets on a major geopolitical event hours before it occured. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire late Tuesday on social media. These were the sole bets made on Polymarket through these accounts. In January, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit by betting that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, hours before Maduro was captured. In the hours before the start of the Iran war, another account made roughly $550,000 in a series of trades effectively betting that the U.S. would strike Iran and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office. Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as the subcommittee on digital assets and financial technology, sent a letter Thursday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission demanding the regulator review and investigate these well-timed trades. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, which includes prediction markets. "This pattern raises serious concerns that certain market participants may have had access to material nonpublic information regarding a market-moving geopolitical event," Torres wrote. The letter was shared exclusively with The AP. "What is the statistical likelihood that of anyone other than an insider trader placing a winning bet 12 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement," Torres said in an interview with AP. "There are two answers: God, or an insider trader. And something tells me that God it not placing bets around Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. " Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow their users to bet on everything from whether it will rain in Phoenix, Arizona next week to whether the Federal Reserve will raise or lower interest rates. U.S. residents are barred from using Polymarket under both its terms of service and federal law, though Polymarket's crypto-based design and limited identity checks can make those restrictions hard to police. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain why it continues to allow trades on war and violence as well as whether the company is making any efforts to keep insiders from trading on the platform. "Polymarket has become an illicit market to sell and exploit national security secrets unlike any in history, and by extension a potential honeypot for foreign intelligence services watching for those same suspicious bets and wagers," Blumenthal wrote. Republicans have also criticized these platforms and called for bans on these sorts of bets. There are at least two bills pending in Congress co-signed by both parties, one in the House and one in the Senate. "We don't want to imagine a world where America's adversaries use prediction markets to anticipate our next move," said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, after the release of the AP's findings on the ceasefire wagers. Polymarket did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The stakes are high for both Kalshi and Polymarket as they seek approval to operate in the U.S. and nationwide, particularly in the lucrative sports betting market. Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022 and has moved to reenter the country by acquiring a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, giving it a legal pathway to start offering contracts domestically. The company has begun a limited rollout in the U.S. while at the same time continuing to operate a separate, crypto-based platform offshore that remains outside U.S. jurisdiction. That platform will account for most of its activity. Kalshi, which is already regulated in the U.S., and its executives have a goal of making the company the nation's dominant prediction market. Kalshi has also leaned heavily into sports, which critics have said effectively makes it a sports betting platform that dabbles in event-based contracts on the side. Both companies have also announced partnerships with sports teams and even news organizations to broaden their reach as well. The competition also carries political overtones. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, and separately serves as a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers
NEW YORK (AP) -- Calls are increasing inside Congress for investigations into the prediction market platform Polymarket after the latest instance where groups of anonymous traders made strategic, well-timed bets on a major geopolitical event hours before it occured. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire late Tuesday on social media. These were the sole bets made on Polymarket through these accounts. In January, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit by betting that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, hours before Maduro was captured. In the hours before the start of the Iran war, another account made roughly $550,000 in a series of trades effectively betting that the U.S. would strike Iran and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office. Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as the subcommittee on digital assets and financial technology, sent a letter Thursday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission demanding the regulator review and investigate these well-timed trades. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, which includes prediction markets. "This pattern raises serious concerns that certain market participants may have had access to material nonpublic information regarding a market-moving geopolitical event," Torres wrote. The letter was shared exclusively with The AP. "What is the statistical likelihood that of anyone other than an insider trader placing a winning bet 12 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement," Torres said in an interview with AP. "There are two answers: God, or an insider trader. And something tells me that God it not placing bets around Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. " Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow their users to bet on everything from whether it will rain in Phoenix, Arizona next week to whether the Federal Reserve will raise or lower interest rates. U.S. residents are barred from using Polymarket under both its terms of service and federal law, though Polymarket's crypto-based design and limited identity checks can make those restrictions hard to police. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain why it continues to allow trades on war and violence as well as whether the company is making any efforts to keep insiders from trading on the platform. "Polymarket has become an illicit market to sell and exploit national security secrets unlike any in history, and by extension a potential honeypot for foreign intelligence services watching for those same suspicious bets and wagers," Blumenthal wrote. Republicans have also criticized these platforms and called for bans on these sorts of bets. There are at least two bills pending in Congress co-signed by both parties, one in the House and one in the Senate. "We don't want to imagine a world where America's adversaries use prediction markets to anticipate our next move," said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, after the release of the AP's findings on the ceasefire wagers. Polymarket did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The stakes are high for both Kalshi and Polymarket as they seek approval to operate in the U.S. and nationwide, particularly in the lucrative sports betting market. Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022 and has moved to reenter the country by acquiring a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, giving it a legal pathway to start offering contracts domestically. The company has begun a limited rollout in the U.S. while at the same time continuing to operate a separate, crypto-based platform offshore that remains outside U.S. jurisdiction. That platform will account for most of its activity. Kalshi, which is already regulated in the U.S., and its executives have a goal of making the company the nation's dominant prediction market. Kalshi has also leaned heavily into sports, which critics have said effectively makes it a sports betting platform that dabbles in event-based contracts on the side. Both companies have also announced partnerships with sports teams and even news organizations to broaden their reach as well. The competition also carries political overtones. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, and separately serves as a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi.
Anthropic Is Taking Over Enterprise (Private:ANTHRO)
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Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers - MyNorthwest.com
NEW YORK (AP) -- Calls are increasing inside Congress for investigations into the prediction market platform Polymarket after the latest instance where groups of anonymous traders made strategic, well-timed bets on a major geopolitical event hours before it occured. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire late Tuesday on social media. These were the sole bets made on Polymarket through these accounts. In January, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit by betting that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, hours before Maduro was captured. In the hours before the start of the Iran war, another account made roughly $550,000 in a series of trades effectively betting that the U.S. would strike Iran and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office. Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as the subcommittee on digital assets and financial technology, sent a letter Thursday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission demanding the regulator review and investigate these well-timed trades. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, which includes prediction markets. "This pattern raises serious concerns that certain market participants may have had access to material nonpublic information regarding a market-moving geopolitical event," Torres wrote. The letter was shared exclusively with The AP. "What is the statistical likelihood that of anyone other than an insider trader placing a winning bet 12 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement," Torres said in an interview with AP. "There are two answers: God, or an insider trader. And something tells me that God it not placing bets around Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. " Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow their users to bet on everything from whether it will rain in Phoenix, Arizona next week to whether the Federal Reserve will raise or lower interest rates. U.S. residents are barred from using Polymarket under both its terms of service and federal law, though Polymarket's crypto-based design and limited identity checks can make those restrictions hard to police. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain why it continues to allow trades on war and violence as well as whether the company is making any efforts to keep insiders from trading on the platform. "Polymarket has become an illicit market to sell and exploit national security secrets unlike any in history, and by extension a potential honeypot for foreign intelligence services watching for those same suspicious bets and wagers," Blumenthal wrote. Republicans have also criticized these platforms and called for bans on these sorts of bets. There are at least two bills pending in Congress co-signed by both parties, one in the House and one in the Senate. "We don't want to imagine a world where America's adversaries use prediction markets to anticipate our next move," said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, after the release of the AP's findings on the ceasefire wagers. Polymarket did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The stakes are high for both Kalshi and Polymarket as they seek approval to operate in the U.S. and nationwide, particularly in the lucrative sports betting market. Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022 and has moved to reenter the country by acquiring a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, giving it a legal pathway to start offering contracts domestically. The company has begun a limited rollout in the U.S. while at the same time continuing to operate a separate, crypto-based platform offshore that remains outside U.S. jurisdiction. That platform will account for most of its activity. Kalshi, which is already regulated in the U.S., and its executives have a goal of making the company the nation's dominant prediction market. Kalshi has also leaned heavily into sports, which critics have said effectively makes it a sports betting platform that dabbles in event-based contracts on the side. Both companies have also announced partnerships with sports teams and even news organizations to broaden their reach as well. The competition also carries political overtones. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, and separately serves as a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers - WTOP News
NEW YORK (AP) -- Calls are increasing inside Congress for investigations into the prediction market platform Polymarket after the latest instance where groups of anonymous traders made strategic, well-timed bets on a major geopolitical event hours before it occured. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire late Tuesday on social media. These were the sole bets made on Polymarket through these accounts. In January, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit by betting that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, hours before Maduro was captured. In the hours before the start of the Iran war, another account made roughly $550,000 in a series of trades effectively betting that the U.S. would strike Iran and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office. Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as the subcommittee on digital assets and financial technology, sent a letter Thursday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission demanding the regulator review and investigate these well-timed trades. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, which includes prediction markets. "This pattern raises serious concerns that certain market participants may have had access to material nonpublic information regarding a market-moving geopolitical event," Torres wrote. The letter was shared exclusively with The AP. "What is the statistical likelihood that of anyone other than an insider trader placing a winning bet 12 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement," Torres said in an interview with AP. "There are two answers: God, or an insider trader. And something tells me that God it not placing bets around Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. " Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow their users to bet on everything from whether it will rain in Phoenix, Arizona next week to whether the Federal Reserve will raise or lower interest rates. U.S. residents are barred from using Polymarket under both its terms of service and federal law, though Polymarket's crypto-based design and limited identity checks can make those restrictions hard to police. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain why it continues to allow trades on war and violence as well as whether the company is making any efforts to keep insiders from trading on the platform. "Polymarket has become an illicit market to sell and exploit national security secrets unlike any in history, and by extension a potential honeypot for foreign intelligence services watching for those same suspicious bets and wagers," Blumenthal wrote. Republicans have also criticized these platforms and called for bans on these sorts of bets. There are at least two bills pending in Congress co-signed by both parties, one in the House and one in the Senate. "We don't want to imagine a world where America's adversaries use prediction markets to anticipate our next move," said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, after the release of the AP's findings on the ceasefire wagers. Polymarket did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The stakes are high for both Kalshi and Polymarket as they seek approval to operate in the U.S. and nationwide, particularly in the lucrative sports betting market. Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022 and has moved to reenter the country by acquiring a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, giving it a legal pathway to start offering contracts domestically. The company has begun a limited rollout in the U.S. while at the same time continuing to operate a separate, crypto-based platform offshore that remains outside U.S. jurisdiction. That platform will account for most of its activity. Kalshi, which is already regulated in the U.S., and its executives have a goal of making the company the nation's dominant prediction market. Kalshi has also leaned heavily into sports, which critics have said effectively makes it a sports betting platform that dabbles in event-based contracts on the side. Both companies have also announced partnerships with sports teams and even news organizations to broaden their reach as well. The competition also carries political overtones. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, and separately serves as a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi. Copyright © 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.
Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers
NEW YORK (AP) -- Calls are increasing inside Congress for investigations into the prediction market platform Polymarket after the latest instance where groups of anonymous traders made strategic, well-timed bets on a major geopolitical event hours before it occured. On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that at least 50 brand new accounts on Polymarket placed substantial bets on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the hours, even minutes, before President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire late Tuesday on social media. These were the sole bets made on Polymarket through these accounts. In January, an anonymous Polymarket user made a $400,000 profit by betting that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would be out of office, hours before Maduro was captured. In the hours before the start of the Iran war, another account made roughly $550,000 in a series of trades effectively betting that the U.S. would strike Iran and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office. Such prescient wagers have raised eyebrows -- and accusations that prediction markets are ripe for insider trading. And the issue goes beyond these three geopolitical events, according to at least one report. Researchers at Harvard University released a paper last month where, using public blockchain data, they estimated that $143 million in profits have been made on Polymarket by individuals who potentially had insider information about events ranging from Taylor Swift's engagement to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as the subcommittee on digital assets and financial technology, sent a letter Thursday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission demanding the regulator review and investigate these well-timed trades. The CFTC regulates the derivatives markets, which includes prediction markets. "This pattern raises serious concerns that certain market participants may have had access to material nonpublic information regarding a market-moving geopolitical event," Torres wrote. The letter was shared exclusively with The AP. "What is the statistical likelihood that of anyone other than an insider trader placing a winning bet 12 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement," Torres said in an interview with AP. "There are two answers: God, or an insider trader. And something tells me that God it not placing bets around Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. " Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow their users to bet on everything from whether it will rain in Phoenix, Arizona next week to whether the Federal Reserve will raise or lower interest rates. U.S. residents are barred from using Polymarket under both its terms of service and federal law, though Polymarket's crypto-based design and limited identity checks can make those restrictions hard to police. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, sent a letter to Polymarket on Thursday demanding the company explain why it continues to allow trades on war and violence as well as whether the company is making any efforts to keep insiders from trading on the platform. "Polymarket has become an illicit market to sell and exploit national security secrets unlike any in history, and by extension a potential honeypot for foreign intelligence services watching for those same suspicious bets and wagers," Blumenthal wrote. Republicans have also criticized these platforms and called for bans on these sorts of bets. There are at least two bills pending in Congress co-signed by both parties, one in the House and one in the Senate. "We don't want to imagine a world where America's adversaries use prediction markets to anticipate our next move," said Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, after the release of the AP's findings on the ceasefire wagers. Polymarket did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The stakes are high for both Kalshi and Polymarket as they seek approval to operate in the U.S. and nationwide, particularly in the lucrative sports betting market. Polymarket was banned from the U.S. in 2022 and has moved to reenter the country by acquiring a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, giving it a legal pathway to start offering contracts domestically. The company has begun a limited rollout in the U.S. while at the same time continuing to operate a separate, crypto-based platform offshore that remains outside U.S. jurisdiction. That platform will account for most of its activity. Kalshi, which is already regulated in the U.S., and its executives have a goal of making the company the nation's dominant prediction market. Kalshi has also leaned heavily into sports, which critics have said effectively makes it a sports betting platform that dabbles in event-based contracts on the side. Both companies have also announced partnerships with sports teams and even news organizations to broaden their reach as well. The competition also carries political overtones. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, and separately serves as a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi.
Is Anthropic limiting the release of Mythos to protect the internet -- or Anthropic? | TechCrunch
Anthropic said this week that it limited the release of its newest model, dubbed Mythos, because it is too capable of finding security exploits in software relied upon by users around the world. Instead of unleashing Mythos on the public, the frontier lab will share it with a group of large companies and organizations that operate critical online infrastructure, from Amazon Web Services to JPMorgan Chase. OpenAI is reportedly considering a similar plan for its next cybersecurity tool. The ostensible idea is to let these big enterprises get ahead of bad actors who could leverage advanced LLMs to penetrate secure software. But the "e"-word in the sentence above is a hint that there might be more to this release strategy than cybersecurity -- or the hyping of model capabilities. Dan Lahav, the CEO of the AI cybersecurity lab Irregular, told TechCrunch in March, before the release of Mythos, that while the discovery of vulnerabilities by AI tools matters, the specific value of any weakness to an attacker depends on many factors, including how they can be used in combination. "The question I always have in my mind," Lahav said, "is did they find something that is exploitable in a very meaningful way, whether individually, or as part of a chain?" Anthropic says Mythos is able to exploit vulnerabilities far more than its previous model, Opus. But it's not clear that Mythos is actually the be-all, end-all of cybersecurity models. Aisle, an AI cybersecurity startup, said it was able to replicate much of what Anthropic says Mythos accomplished using smaller, open-weight models. Aisle's team argues that these results show there is no single deep learning model for cybersecurity, but instead depends on the task at hand. Given that Opus was already seen as a game-changer for cybersecurity, there's another reason that frontier labs may want to limit their releases to big organizations: It creates a flywheel for big enterprise contracts, while making it harder for competitors to to copy their models using distillation, a technique that leverages frontier models to train new LLMs on the cheap. "This is marketing cover for fact that top-end models are now gated by enterprise agreements and no longer available to small labs to distill," David Crawshaw, a software engineer and CEO of the startup exe.dev, suggested in a social media post. "By the time you and I can use Mythos, there will be a new top-end rev that is enterprise only. That treadmill helps keep the enterprise dollars flowing (which is most of the dollars) by relegating distillation companies to second rank," said Crawshaw. That analysis jibes with what we're seeing in the AI ecosystem: A race between frontier labs developing the largest, most capable models, and companies like Aisle which rely on multiple models and see open-source LLMs, often from China and often allegedly developed through distillation, as a path to economic advantage. The frontier labs have been taking a harder line on distillation this year, with Anthropic publicly revealing what it says are attempts by Chinese firms to copy its models, and three leading labs -- Anthropic, Google and OpenAI -- teaming up to identify distillers and block them, according to a Bloomberg report. Distillation is a threat to the business model of frontier labs because it eliminates the advantages conveyed by using huge amounts of capital to scale. Blocking distillation, then, is already a worthwhile endeavor, but the selective release approach to doing so also gives the labs a way to differentiate their enterprise offerings as the category becomes the key to profitable deployment. Whether Mythos or any new model truly threatens the security of the internet remains to be seen, and a careful roll-out of the technology is a responsible way forward. Anthropic didn't respond to our questions about whether the decision also relates to distillation concerns at press time, but the company may have found a clever approach to protecting the internet -- and its bottom line.
