Kairos Raises $2.5M to Build a Pro Terminal for Traders

Kairos, a young startup focused on building better tools for prediction market traders, has raised $2.5 million in a funding round led by a16z crypto, a venture capital fund known for investing in crypto and Web3 startups since its launch in 2013.

“An Institutional Trading Desk on Your Laptop”

The funds will be used to develop a single, professional-grade terminal that integrates data, trading, and analysis across multiple prediction markets.

Kairos is, therefore, working on what it describes as a Bloomberg Terminal-style product, designed specifically for traders who operate across several prediction market platforms at once. 

In other words, the product will not target casual users who usually place one-off bets, but experienced market participants who trade economic events, political outcomes, and other real-world scenarios, often on tight timelines.

“What the Bloomberg Terminal did for Wall Street, Kairos does for prediction market traders. Real-time data, news, analytics, and low-latency execution all in one place,” founders Jay Malavia and Zayd Alzein wrote in a post on X. “The power of an institutional trading desk on your laptop.”

Impressive List of Investors

Alongside a16z crypto, the round included backing from Geneva Trading, the University of Illinois, DB News, and more than 20 angel investors. 

This versatile mix of venture capital and investors with close ties to the industry suggests growing interest in the infrastructure side of prediction markets, not just the exchanges themselves.

Time is also of the essence, with prediction markets currently attracting more attention from hedge funds, proprietary trading firms, and brokerages interested in offering access to event-based contracts. 

Still, the space remains fragmented, with traders looking to arbitrage pricing differences between platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket still having to jump between separate sites, manage multiple dashboards, and execute trades manually.

Kairos wishes to remove these problems by consolidating market data and execution into a single interface. Their new terminal could save traders precious seconds and reduce operational headaches. 

Kairos, “Foundational Layer for Prediction Markets”

“We believe that Kairos will be the foundational layer for prediction markets. One that connects traders, builders, and exchanges in an open ecosystem,” Malavia and Alzein added. 

The two went on to describe it as a “network where developers can leverage our performant infrastructure to build new apps for an existing community of traders.”

The founders are not new to building systems for professional traders. Before Kairos, they worked on technology used by institutional market participants.

For a16z crypto, the investment fits neatly into a broader strategy. The firm already backs Kalshi, currently the largest regulated event contracts exchange in the US by volume. It was also an early investor in Coinbase, which recently entered the prediction markets space through a partnership with Kalshi.

“We believe prediction markets are only in their early innings, and tools like Kairos that support real traders, real liquidity, and real performance will accelerate their next leg of growth,” the firm said on its website.