Kalshi to Launch Prediction Markets for FDA Decisions, Trial Outcomes

By Dean Seal

Kalshi is working to test out prediction markets on clinical drug trial outcomes and regulatory decisions from the Food and Drug Administration.

The company said Thursday that it is partnering with intelligence platform AppliedXL on a pilot suite of markets that would let users bet on the odds that a drug makes it through the regulatory pipeline.

The effort marks a potentially major new frontier for the burgeoning prediction markets industry.

Kalshi said the markets would provide investors with a clear picture of all publicly available information about a drug's chances of success, bypassing the messaging of the drug's sponsor.

"The data that determines which drugs advance and which don't is largely locked away from the people who need it most," Chief Executive Tarek Mansour said.

AppliedXL is set to provide the markets' "resolution infrastructure," the standardized protocol for determining the final outcome of an event and settle trades.

Each contract will specify a named public document as its resolution source, such as an FDA approval letter, or the primary endpoint of a trial as registered on the federal government's publicly accessible database for human clinical research studies, Kalshi said.

Markets in the pilot program will be constrained to either late-stage trials or to trials that will only have a contract listed after enrollment finishes, the company said.

Kalshi's existing rules apply to the new markets, including a prohibition on trading from anyone who holds material nonpublic information.

The two companies said they will study the performance of the markets and how traders engage with them. Those findings will be used to refine the design and guardrails around the markets ahead of a potentially broader release, they said.

Write to Dean Seal at dean.seal@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 16, 2026 11:36 ET (15:36 GMT)