Software Developer

Robinhood's prediction markets business generated $156 million in Q2 2026, surpassing both equities trading and crypto revenue. This represents a dramatic increase from roughly $10 million in Q2 2025, now accounting for 20% of transaction revenue. Bernstein raised its price target from $130 to $160, projecting 64% annual growth for event contracts. The company reported earnings of $0.62 per share on $1.31 billion in revenue, beating Wall Street expectations. However, crypto trading revenue fell 38% year over year and 25% quarter-over-quarter. Much of the prediction market growth stemmed from one-off events like the World Cup and midterm elections, raising questions about sustainability. Robinhood Gold added 1.5 million members, up 39%. The company lowered expense guidance whilst investing in newer ventures like Rothera and WonderFi.

Robinhood to list a fund that lets anyone back Y Combinator startups. 5:23 AM PDT · August 5, 2026 Robinhood this week unveiled a financial instrument that lets anyone feel like they, too, can make money by backing Y Combinator startups. Robinhood Venture Fund II (RVII) is expected to become a publicly traded fund on August 13 at an opening price of $25 per share. The fund intends to raise as much as $200 million, Reuters reports, and use that money to invest in startups founded by current and former Y Combinator participants, should those startups agree to sell their shares. While any retail investor can buy shares in the fund, they will not directly hold any shares in the startups. Investors will be able to trade their shares in the fund, but it's unclear how much profit they can expect to make should the YC companies manage big exits. The fund intends to pay the 2/20 fees typical in the VC world to another entity owned by Robinhood, plus tack on extra fees. That means Robinhood's unit will collect 2% of the net returns as a management fee, plus other fees, taking the total to just over 4%, the company said. The fund will also pay the Robinhood unit 20% "carried interest" (commonly called "carry"). That means if enough Y Combinator companies have good exits for the fund to make money, that Robinhood unit will get 20% of the resulting returns. But RVII doesn't appear to have an end date for returning its remaining profits to investors, unlike VC funds, which typically tend to run for about 10 years. Nor does RVII appear to promise regular distributions of cash profits. It may issue such distributions, but investors may largely have to bank on returns from the fund's rising stock price. (We've asked Robinhood for more information about this.) It's certainly possible to make money by trading the fund's shares. Robinhood Ventures Fund I (NYSE: RVI), which was also founded to buy shares in hot private companies like Databricks, Mercor, and OpenAI, routinely trades above its IPO price of $21. Sam Altman isn't the only one who wants to pump the brakes on AI | Equity Podcast 0 seconds of 34 minutes, 35 seconds Volume 0% It's equally possible to lose money: After peaking at over $56 in May, RVI's stock now trades at around $28 per share. Robinhood has also gotten some pushback on other schemes that tried to tie financial products to the names of valuable private companies. In 2025, it sold crypto assets described as tokenized shares of OpenAI and SpaceX. OpenAI condemned these, saying it wasn't involved, and that the tokens did not represent any holdings in the company. This fund, however, appears to operate more akin to a special purpose vehicle than to that 2025 crypto vehicle. It is buying actual shares. So, for anyone that likes the idea of betting on the YC pedigree, this is certainly a very Silicon Valley way to go. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn't affect our editorial independence. Julie Bort Venture Editor Julie Bort is the Startups/Venture Desk editor for TechCrunch. You can contact or verify outreach from Julie by emailing [email protected] or via @Julie188 on X. October 13 - 15 San Francisco Scale faster. Grow your portfolio. Gain practical expertise. No matter your goal, Disrupt can empower you. Save up to $330 today!

7 prediction market platforms to watch in 2026. Prediction markets have rapidly evolved from a niche crypto experiment into one of the industry's fastest-growing sectors. Once focused primarily on elections and financial events, today's platforms span sports, entertainment, economics, and business forecasting, with each taking a different approach to market creation, regulation, and user participation. Here are seven platforms shaping the next generation of prediction markets. 1. Polymarket Polymarket has become one of the most recognizable names in prediction markets, combining blockchain-based infrastructure with a centralized user experience. The platform allows users to trade on politics, economics, sports, cryptocurrencies, and major world events using real-money markets. Its rapid growth has helped bring prediction markets into the mainstream. While regulatory questions remain, including its pending application for a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) license, the platform continues to play a significant role in expanding adoption. Kalshi has established itself as the leading regulated prediction market platform in the United States. Operating under CFTC oversight, it offers event contracts tied to inflation, elections, weather, sports, and economic indicators. Despite a legal dispute with State around the applicability of NY's gambling laws, the platform's regulatory-first approach has helped position prediction markets alongside more traditional financial products, broadening participation beyond crypto-native audiences. 3. Rain Trade Rather than limiting users to centralized platform-curated markets, Rain Trade enables anyone to create public or private prediction markets on virtually any topic and in any language. Built on Rain Protocol, the platform combines permissionless market creation with sponsored gas transactions, cross-chain funding, and AI-assisted or manual market resolution. Market creators also earn a share of trading volume, shifting prediction markets toward more community-driven ecosystem participation where users decide what deserves a market... 4. Robinhood Event Trading Robinhood has introduced event contracts directly into its investing platform, exposing millions of retail investors to prediction-based trading through a familiar interface. Its entry into the sector reflects growing confidence that event markets may become a lasting, permanent category within mainstream financial services. 5. FanDuel Predicts FanDuel Predicts represents the convergence of sports media, fan engagement, and prediction markets. Rather than focusing on politics or macroeconomics, it centers on sports-related forecasting, allowing fans to engage with live events in new ways beyond traditional betting. Its focus on fan engagement highlights how prediction markets are expanding beyond finance and politics into broader consumer applications. Best known as a decentralized derivatives exchange on Solana, Drift has expanded into event-based markets that allow users to express views on real-world outcomes alongside digital asset trading. Its evolution reflects the growing convergence between decentralized trading infrastructure and prediction markets. 7. Manifold Markets Manifold Markets has built one of the world's largest community forecasting platforms by allowing users to create and trade prediction markets using play money instead of cryptocurrency. By removing financial barriers, it has become a popular platform for research, experimentation, and community forecasting, demonstrating that prediction markets can generate valuable collective intelligence beyond financial incentives. The Future of Prediction Markets Prediction markets are evolving well beyond their original focus on elections and financial speculation. Today's platforms increasingly emphasize accessibility, user experience, and broader participation, while experimenting with different models ranging from regulated financial products to decentralized, community-created markets. As adoption grows, competition is shifting from simply offering prediction markets to improving how they are created, accessed, and governed. Regulated platforms are expanding mainstream participation, decentralized protocols continue to push innovation, and newer entrants are giving communities greater control over what can be forecast. Together, these platforms illustrate how prediction markets are evolving into broader infrastructure for collective intelligence, enabling individuals and communities to better quantify expectations across finance, sports, technology, and many other sectors. As user experience improves and barriers to participation continue to fall, prediction markets appear to become an increasingly important tool for aggregating information, measuring sentiment, and forecasting real-world outcomes.