Alpaca, the API-first brokerage platform used by hundreds of fintechs and trading platforms worldwide, has struck a partnership with Kalshi, the world’s largest prediction market exchange, to add CFTC-regulated event contracts to its infrastructure. The move lets Alpaca’s partners and builders offer trading on prediction markets through the same rails they already use for stocks, options, fixed income, and crypto.
Under the agreement, Alpaca will integrate Kalshi’s event contracts — regulated instruments covering outcomes in categories such as economic indicators, financial markets, weather, sports, and cultural events — directly into its existing Broker API and Trading API. That means the more than 300 financial institutions and platforms already built on Alpaca’s infrastructure will be able to add prediction markets to their offering without standing up a separate technology stack, compliance framework, or custody arrangement.
“Alpaca’s partners and users want to access more markets without having to build and manage a separate infrastructure stack for every asset class,” said Tony Lee, Chief Brokerage Officer at Alpaca. “Bringing Kalshi’s event contracts to Alpaca is a natural extension of that model, allowing access to more asset classes through the same infrastructure they already use.”
Kalshi, which operates a CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse for event contracts, has emerged as the dominant player in the fast-growing prediction market category, with trading volume surpassing $40 billion in July 2026 alone. The company was valued at $22 billion in a funding round in March 2026 and has reportedly been in talks to raise fresh capital at a valuation as high as $40 billion, underscoring how quickly investor appetite for the sector has grown.
The partnership builds directly on Alpaca’s recent registration of its affiliate, Alpaca Derivatives LLC, as a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) with the CFTC, alongside membership in the National Futures Association (NFA). That registration, confirmed in early August 2026, gives Alpaca the regulatory footing to handle custody, money movement, account statements, and account management for derivatives-style products in the United States. Kalshi, in turn, continues to provide the regulated marketplace and clearing infrastructure. Availability of the new prediction market offering will depend on regulatory requirements and geographic eligibility, and the companies have not yet set a firm launch date.
Why It Matters
The deal is significant for a few reasons that go beyond a single product integration.
First, it marks one of the clearest signs yet that prediction markets are moving from a niche, retail-driven curiosity into mainstream financial infrastructure. Kalshi has spent the past two years building the CFTC-regulated rails for event contracts; Alpaca’s decision to plug that infrastructure directly into a brokerage stack already used by hundreds of platforms means prediction markets can now be distributed at scale, the same way stocks or options are, rather than requiring users to open an account on a standalone app.
Second, it reflects a broader consolidation trend in how multi-asset trading platforms are being built. Alpaca has spent years positioning itself as “infrastructure-as-a-service” for brokerages and fintechs — a single API surface spanning equities, options, fixed income, and crypto. Adding event contracts to that stack, rather than treating prediction markets as a separate vertical, signals that the industry increasingly views them as just another asset class alongside traditional securities and digital assets, not a regulatory or product outlier.
Third, the timing matters for the crypto and digital-asset industry specifically. Prediction markets and crypto have been closely intertwined since Polymarket and Kalshi both grew out of, and alongside, crypto-native trading infrastructure. Analysts at Bernstein have projected the prediction market sector could reach roughly $240 billion in trading volume in 2026 and scale toward $1 trillion by 2030. As regulated players like Kalshi win institutional distribution partners such as Alpaca, it strengthens the case that event contracts — many of which settle in ways structurally similar to derivatives and, in some venues, crypto-denominated markets — are becoming a durable, regulated pillar of the broader digital-asset and fintech ecosystem rather than a passing trend.
Finally, for builders and platforms across Asia and other international markets that rely on Alpaca’s global brokerage infrastructure, the partnership opens a pathway to eventually offer regulated event contracts to their own users, subject to local regulatory approval — extending the reach of U.S.-regulated prediction markets well beyond American retail investors and further blurring the line between traditional finance, crypto infrastructure, and the newest asset class to go mainstream.