Polymarket confirms partnership aimed at detecting suspicious trading activity as it continues to roll out its regulated U.S. prediction market app.
Polymarket is partnering with data analytics firm Palantir Technologies and artificial-intelligence developer TWG AI to monitor trading activity in sports markets as prediction platforms face growing scrutiny over insider trading and market integrity.
“Our partnership with Palantir and TWG AI allows us to apply world-class analytics and monitoring to sports markets while building tools that can help leagues and teams maintain confidence in the games themselves,” Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan said in a news release. “Our goal has always been to give fans new ways to engage with the sports they love while ensuring those markets can grow responsibly on a global scale.”
Bloomberg first reported the partnership Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. According to the report, the companies are developing systems designed to identify suspicious activity on Polymarket’s U.S. trading platform, including screening traders against lists of individuals banned from sports betting and flagging unusual activity that could indicate insider trading or other forms of manipulation.
The effort comes as prediction markets like Polymarket and rival platform Kalshi have seen trading volumes surge in recent months, driven in part by growing interest in sports event contracts. But the rapid growth has also raised questions from regulators and professional sports leagues about how platforms detect insider information and suspicious wagering patterns that could signal integrity risks in sporting events.
Polymarket launched its U.S. app late last year after acquiring a Commodity Futures Trading Commission-approved exchange. The platform continues to gradually onboard users from a waitlist and remains in a limited rollout phase, currently offering only sports markets as it expands its U.S. presence.
Vergence AI designed to detect suspicious trading activity
Polymarket says the monitoring tools will run on the Vergence AI engine, infrastructure developed last year through a joint venture between Palantir and TWG AI. According to the company, the platform provides end-to-end oversight of trading activity, including pre- and post-trade surveillance, anomaly-detection models that flag potential manipulation or coordinated trading, screening of prohibited traders and automated compliance reporting. The system also includes dashboards and case-management tools designed to help compliance teams investigate irregular activity and document enforcement actions.
Bloomberg also reported that Polymarket has worked with Integrity Compliance 360 (IC360), a firm that monitors betting markets for irregular activity and alerts sportsbooks and regulators to potential integrity issues. These systems are commonly used in the sports betting industry to detect unusual wagering patterns that could indicate insider information or possible match-fixing.
Palantir, co-founded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel, is best known for developing data analytics software used by U.S. government agencies and financial institutions to analyze massive datasets and detect anomalies. The company’s platforms are commonly used for tasks like fraud detection, transaction monitoring and intelligence analysis, where identifying unusual patterns in large streams of data is critical.
TWG AI is the artificial-intelligence arm of investment firm TWG Global and has partnered with Palantir on projects aimed at deploying AI systems across financial services. The companies have focused on building tools for data modeling, market analysis and compliance monitoring. TWG Global is led by billionaire investor Mark Walter, whose holdings include the Los Angeles Dodgers, a major stake in the Los Angeles Lakers and ownership of English Premier League club Chelsea FC, making him one of the most influential investors in global sports.
Palantir and TWG AI have experience in analytics, surveillance, and compliance infrastructure, but there’s no public evidence they’ve previously built this kind of system specifically for sports betting or prediction markets.
Kalshi has taken more public approach to market surveillance
Kalshi has been more public and transparent in describing how it monitors trading activity on its platform. In February, the exchange disclosed two closed insider-trading cases and said it had opened roughly 200 investigations over the past year as part of a broader push to strengthen market integrity controls.
Kalshi has also publicly outlined some of the surveillance systems behind those efforts. The platform works with compliance technology firm Solidus Labs, whose HALO platform provides AI-driven trade surveillance designed to detect market abuse by analyzing trading behavior and other data signals. For sports markets, Kalshi also partners with IC360. Those systems operate alongside Kalshi’s proprietary monitoring engine, known as Poirot, which flags unusual trading patterns in real time and follows a detect/investigate/enforce process modeled on surveillance systems used by major financial exchanges.
Polymarket, by contrast, has historically been less public about how it monitors suspicious trading activity, particularly on its international platform. The partnership with Palantir and TWG AI suggests the company may now be seeking to strengthen its surveillance infrastructure as it builds out its regulated U.S. business.
Platforms that are overseen by the CFTC must maintain surveillance systems capable of detecting market manipulation, insider trading and other abusive trading practices, a requirement that takes on added importance as Polymarket rolls out its regulated U.S. platform.
Industry faces pressure to address integrity risks in sports contracts
The push to strengthen monitoring systems comes as prediction market platforms face increasing attention from regulators, sports leagues and lawmakers over how event contracts should be overseen.
Critics have argued that sports prediction markets could create opportunities for athletes, coaches or other insiders to profit from non-public information if adequate safeguards are not in place. Similar concerns have long shaped integrity frameworks in the regulated sports betting industry, where sportsbooks rely on monitoring systems and data-sharing networks to detect unusual wagering patterns.
Prediction market operators, however, argue that their platforms offer a level of transparency that can make suspicious activity easier to identify. Because contracts trade on open exchanges where prices adjust in real time, unusual trading patterns can potentially be detected more quickly than in traditional betting markets.
As interest in sports prediction markets grows, companies are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that their platforms can detect insider trading and other integrity risks. Polymarket’s partnership with Palantir and TWG AI shows an effort to strengthen those safeguards as it expands its regulated U.S. platform.
