A new trend has emerged in the financial world — betting on artificial intelligence models. The trend is especially noticeable on the financial exchange and forecasting platform Kalshi and the cryptocurrency-based forecasting market Polymarket, where players bet millions of dollars every month. This is reported by the WSJ.
The stakes are tied to real-world events, such as the performance of AI models in various competitions and the success of AI products. Among the recent events that have piqued the interest of players is the restructuring of Meta Superintelligence Labs into four groups with the goal of creating AI that surpasses human cognitive abilities.
At the same time, the competitive nature of the AI field brings certain challenges to the betting market. In particular, the desire of companies to constantly attract the best researchers in the industry, as Meta has been actively doing recently, leads to fluctuations in the betting market.
Also adding to the uncertainty in the industry is the weak reception of Meta's latest open-source model, Llama 4. Despite this, the AI betting market continues to grow along with investment in the industry and increasing demand for AI products.