- ▸ CEO Jeff Sprecher explicitly positioned prediction market data alongside traditional macro indicators, with ICE integrating Polymarket feeds into institutional workflows via its data network.
- ▸ ICE is using Polymarket both for event-probability data (Signals product) and blockchain-native infrastructure expertise as it builds tokenized securities and continuous trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
- ▸ While Kalshi is pulling ahead in volume, Polymarket’s potential U.S. regulatory return + ICE backing positions it for long-term scale via institutional adoption and unified liquidity.
Intercontinental Exchange, the company behind the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), reported its strongest quarter in company history on April 30. But buried in the prepared remarks was something more interesting than the record numbers: ICE founder, chair, and CEO Jeff Sprecher positioned prediction market data alongside other key macro indicators essential for managing risk.
“New technologies such as tokenization and prediction markets are drawing increased attention,” Sprecher said on the Q1 2026 earnings call. “We approach these developments from first principles. How is risk managed? How does settlement function? From where does trusted data originate? And how do participants gain regulated access? Those questions matter regardless of the form that risk transfer takes, and they are questions that ICE has spent decades learning how to answer.”
ICE’s investment in and partnership with Polymarket goes beyond data to supporting the company’s push into 24/7 trading of tokenized securities and immediate onchain settlement, announced in January. In February 2026, ICE launched the Polymarket Signals and Sentiment tool, providing normalized, structured prediction market data feeds delivered exclusively through ICE’s institutional data network. Sprecher also confirmed during the earnings call that “Polymarket’s engineering team is collaborating with us concerning on-chain settlement and 24/7 capital movement,” a reference to ICE’s broader push into tokenized securities.
The company is building out its Polymarket play from a position of financial strength. NYSE: ICE posted record net revenues of $3.0 billion (up 18% year-over-year), record adjusted earnings per share of $2.35 (up 37%), and record adjusted operating income of $1.9 billion (up 26%) in Q1 2026. The company also returned $848 million to shareholders in the quarter, including $551 million in stock buybacks.
ICE’s goal, as confirmed by Q1 earnings call remarks, is to build the regulated infrastructure layer for a financial system that is moving toward 24/7, onchain operation and settlement, and to be the source of trusted data that system runs on.
Polymarket supporting ICE data signals and blockchain push
ICE first announced a strategic investment in Polymarket in October 2025, committing up to $2 billion at a roughly $8 billion pre-money valuation. In March, it closed a $600 million follow-on investment, bringing its total commitment to roughly $1.6 billion. ICE’s core thesis is that this is primarily a data play to bolster their existing business.
Institutional traders have always had ways to price what’s already happened. What they’ve never had is a clean, structured, continuously updating feed of what sophisticated crowds collectively believe will happen, on elections, central bank decisions, geopolitical events, and more. That’s what Polymarket provides. ICE takes that raw signal, normalizes it against its existing financial data infrastructure, and delivers it through the same pipes that carry securities pricing and corporate actions.
On the earnings call, President Ben Jackson named the product directly in his prepared remarks: “During the quarter, we launched our Polymarket Signals and Sentiment product, which normalized prediction market data for institutional workflows and is available exclusively through ICE feeds. We are also incorporating additional correlated data sets including Reddit and Dow Jones content to provide broader context around market sentiment and information flow.”
When Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Bedell asked directly about what’s driving FIDS (Fixed Income and Data Services) recurring revenue growth, which has climbed from 5% to 9% YoY over the last five quarters, FIDS President Chris Edmonds pointed to Polymarket as an example of the demand expansion and seamless integration: “Our ability to deliver that in a way that is not disruptive to the current operations of the clients that depend on us daily for that activity.” In other words, ICE has been able to integrate Polymarket data into workflows clients already use.
Jackson also named a second, forward-looking value stream beyond the data integration, with Sprecher confirming Polymarket’s blockchain-native engineering capabilities as part of their own build toward blockchain-based trading and settlement.
ICE building toward tokenization, 24/7 trading and settlement
Polymarket is one important piece of what Sprecher laid out on the call as ICE’s broader digital markets architecture. The flagship initiative is a tokenized securities platform being built at the New York Stock Exchange. The idea is to combine the NYSE’s existing high-velocity matching engine, the technology that already handles billions of trades a day, with blockchain-based distribution and settlement, enabling 24/7 trading.
Sprecher was explicit that this doesn’t require any new legislation: “We are pursuing regulatory approval under existing federal law and this initiative is not dependent on any pending legislation.” ICE has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Securitize, naming them as the first digital transfer agent to support tokenized security issuance and lifecycle management on the platform.
The main benefit of tokenization, Sprecher said in his Q&A answer to Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys, is essentially changing how money moves. “The main benefit of tokenization is going to be a rewiring of the movement of money and value and that essentially it’s going to allow that to happen on the Internet as opposed to the conventional banking wires.”
Instead of transfers running through traditional banking systems, which operate on business hours, take days to settle, and require layers of intermediaries, value moves over the internet, near-instantly, more like an email. He pointed to equity markets as a simple analogy: a few years ago, when the US stock market shortened the time it takes to finalize a trade from two business days to one, trading volumes went up.
“And all that to us means that there’ll be more volume of trading and transactions. When you make something easier, people do more of it,” said Sprecher. He also indicated a hybrid model Sprecher’s that bridges conventional infrastructure with an onchain settlement and ownership transfer layer:
“I suspect that we will become a validator on-chain and similarly have that business…Right now, our model is to hook our conventional trading platforms to the chain…matching will still happen on conventional technology, but title transfer and custody and capital movement will move via the Internet through encrypted tokens.”
Polymarket and OKX: Complementary onchain partnerships
Polymarket and OKX are the two partnerships ICE named as reinforcing that new onchain architecture from different angles.
OKX is a major global crypto exchange with more than 120 million users. Its role in the ICE partnership is essentially a two-way bridge: OKX’s crypto-native user base gets a pathway into ICE’s regulated markets including US futures and, eventually, NYSE tokenized equities. In return, ICE gets a pathway to launch regulated crypto futures tied to OKX spot prices. For ICE, it’s a customer acquisition channel into a massive audience that doesn’t currently participate in its traditional markets. For OKX users, it’s a regulated on-ramp to instruments they couldn’t previously access easily.
Polymarket’s role is different but complementary. On the data side, it’s already live with the Signals and Sentiment product delivering event-probability feeds to institutional clients now. On the infrastructure side, Sprecher confirmed a collaboration with Polymarket, which was built natively on blockchain. Its smart contract architecture and on-chain settlement experience is exactly what ICE needs as it builds out the NYSE tokenized platform.
Sprecher pulled these threads together in his prepared remarks: “These initiatives complement our core franchises as our center of gravity remains the technology that supports global risk transfer, price discovery and capital formation.” Just as ICE has done in conventional markets, it is now positioning to be the regulated infrastructure layer of onchain 24/7 capital markets.
The competitive backdrop: Kalshi volume, Polymarket’s regulatory path
That strategic commitment is worth keeping in mind when looking at the near-term competitive picture between Polymarket and Kalshi, which tells a more mixed story. Our April volume report shows Kalshi posting a record $14.81 billion in notional trading volume in April, up 13.3% from March, while Polymarket fell 14.8% to $9.01 billion. The $5.8 billion monthly gap is the largest it’s been. Kalshi’s sports-dominated mix (~85% Sports + Combos) gives it a more resilient floor in a sports-heavy calendar. Polymarket’s heavier exposure to crypto and politics means more macro event dependence.
On valuation, as we reported in April, Polymarket is reportedly weighing a new round at around $15 billion, a significant increase from its ~$9 billion post-money October 2025 level, but trailing Kalshi, which has repriced to $22 billion across multiple rapid fundraising rounds led by Paradigm and Coatue. That gap in successive repricing is growing.
But the volume and valuation snapshot doesn’t fully capture where Polymarket is headed. Polymarket is reportedly in active discussions with the CFTC about bringing its primary offshore platform back to U.S. users, potentially unifying its global exchange infrastructure with its existing U.S. regulatory licenses. If that happens, it would consolidate liquidity that is currently split across two separate platforms and dramatically expand Polymarket’s addressable market. CFTC chair Michael Selig, who is currently the agency’s sole commissioner, has publicly signaled a desire to bring offshore prediction market liquidity “back here into the United States under comprehensive regulation,” which opens the door. Whether the platform could achieve regulatory fit and gain approval from the CFTC is a separate question.
For ICE, Polymarket moving toward full U.S. regulation would be a significant development. It would align Polymarket more directly with the regulated infrastructure model ICE is building around it, and make the data and settlement collaboration considerably easier to scale.
