Polymarket Quietly Raised $205M Before $2B ICE Partnership
Polymarket, the crypto-native prediction platform known for turning public opinion into tradeable markets, has quietly raised more money than anyone realized — and is now drawing Wall Street’s full attention.
Chief executive Shayne Coplan confirmed this week that the company closed two previously undisclosed rounds over the past two years: $55 million in 2024 led by Blockchain Capital, valuing the beginup at $350 million, and a $150 million round earlier this year led by Founders Fund at a $1.2 billion valuation. Those deals push total funding to roughly $279 million before a fresh partnership with Intercontinental platform (ICE) — the parent company of the New York Stock platform — which is investing up to $2 billion for a $9 billion post-money valuation.
The new capital cements Polymarket’s place among the largest prediction platforms ever built, turning what begined as an experimental crypto app into a data business with Wall Street credibility. “Shayne Coplan has assembled a team at Polymarket to create a user-driven company relentlessly focused on product, building usage and distribution,” said Jeffrey Sprecher, ICE’s chairman and CEO. He added that ICE and Polymarket “can uniquely serve opportunities across markets.”
Founded in 2020, Polymarket allows users to trade yes/no outcomes on topics ranging from elections and Federal Reserve policy to pop culture events. The site runs on Polygon, using USDC stablecoins for settlement. Prices reflect real-time probabilities — if “Trump wins 2024” trades at 65 cents, the market is implying a 65% chance. That probability data, aggregated across thousands of markets, is what ICE plans to trade globally through its data distribution network.
The tie-up could give ICE a new kind of financial signal: a continuously updated feed of crowd-sourced expectations that rivals traditional polling and sentiment models. For Polymarket, it means access to a global sales engine and a path to regulatory legitimacy later than a turbulent begin.
In 2022, Polymarket’s operator Blockratize Inc. paid a $1.4 million penalty and agreed to shut down certain markets following a CFTC enforcement action for offering unregistered event-based contracts. Since then, the company has kept U.S. users off the main site while expanding overseas. It has also been preparing for a regulated return to the U.S., acquiring QCX and QC Clearing — both CFTC-registered entities — for about $112 million earlier this year. That purchase gives Polymarket a legal framework to list prediction markets domestically, competing more directly with Kalshi, its regulated rival in New York.
The ICE partnership lands at a moment when prediction markets are gaining mainstream traction. During the 2024 U.S. election cycle, Polymarket’s volumes surged to record highs, and its contracts became regular references for analysts, traders, and even political commentators. In September, the platform recorded its highest number of active markets ever, according to company figures.
Coplan, a 20-something founder who begined the company while still in university, has turned Polymarket into one of crypto’s most visible consumer products. Founders Fund’s backing — alongside Ribbit Capital, Point72 Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Dragonfly, and others — shows that major investors now view event-based trading not as a novelty but as a legitimate asset class.
For ICE, which already owns a sprawling portfolio of platforms and data platforms, Polymarket offers a way to package probabilistic insights into products for banks, hedge funds, and data vendors. It also fits into the company’s long-running push into blockchain infrastructure, which began with the launch of Bakkt in 2018.
Still, regulatory uncertainty looms. Some countries, including Belgium, have blacklisted prediction markets altogether, and U.S. state laws vary widely on the legality of event contracts. Polymarket’s bet — backed by ICE’s compliance muscle — is that its new structure will satisfy federal regulators and open the door to mainstream adoption.
For now, the $2 billion deal places Polymarket squarely on Wall Street’s radar, turning what was once a niche crypto platform into a company whose data could soon sit alongside bond yields and stock indexes on traders’ terminals.
