Kalshi signed a multi-year deal to run Nasdaq's market surveillance platform across its event contracts exchange, the two companies said on Monday. Its regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, already runs the same system.
Kalshi will phase the platform in alongside its existing surveillance framework. It will cover both prediction markets and the perpetual-style derivatives the exchange is adding.
The combined system is meant to flag manipulation and insider trading in real time, and to send trade data to the CFTC in the format the agency requires.
For brokers routing event contracts, the practical change is the reporting pipe. Kalshi's alerts and the CFTC's will come off the same engine, which shortens the path between a flagged trade and a regulator's file.
- Kalshi Adds Second Compliance Platform for Employee Trade Monitoring
- Kalshi Extends Trade Surveillance to Brokerage Arm Kinetic Markets
- Market Makers Can Access Kalshi Through Existing Talos Trading Workflows
Prediction markets "demand surveillance infrastructure with the scale and expertise that can match that pace," said Tony Sio, Nasdaq's head of regulatory strategy and innovation. Neither company disclosed the value of the deal or a timetable for the phases.
Where Else the Platform Runs
The CFTC bought it first. The agency said in August 2025 it was deploying Nasdaq Market Surveillance to replace a system dating to the 1990s, which would give it automated alerts and cross-market analytics for the first time.
Nasdaq says its surveillance technology runs at more than 50 exchanges and 20 international regulators. The company has been selling it into newer asset classes for years, including crypto venues such as Gemini.
It also embedded AI in the investigation workflow in late 2025, automating steps investigators had done by hand.
Four Surveillance Deals in Six Months
Nasdaq is the fourth surveillance arrangement Kalshi has announced this year. Solidus Labs has monitored the exchange since February, and Kalshi extended that coverage to Kinetic Markets, its futures commission merchant, on August 3.
The other two point outward. Kalshi signed StarCompliance in June and Comply on August 4, both to feed its trade data into the software employers use to police staff trading. Comply says its platform serves more than 5,000 firms.
Polymarket Outsourced the Function, Not Just the Tools
Polymarket picked Chainalysis in April for on-chain anomaly detection. It has also worked with Palantir. Its US exchange runs a real-time control desk, and published rules in March that define insider trading and ban spoofing and wash trading.
The difference is where the authority sits. Polymarket handed trade practice surveillance and the power to sanction rule breakers to the National Futures Association under a regulatory services agreement.
Kalshi has kept enforcement in-house and bought tools to feed it. It says it prohibits manipulation and insider trading, and it referred both of the cases that surfaced this year to regulators itself.
Two Insider Cases and a $36 Billion Suit
The CFTC settled with former Representative George Santos in July over trading in a contract on whether he would attend February's State of the Union address.
Santos agreed to give up $17,569.98 in profits, pay a $17,500 penalty and stay out of CFTC-regulated markets for three years. He did not admit wrongdoing.
A White House teleprompter operator is separately under CFTC investigation over bets on which phrases President Donald Trump would use in speeches. Kalshi froze more than $90,000 in the account.
New York's attorney general sued Kalshi on July 31 seeking at least $36 billion in damages and penalties. The case is the latest round in a fight over whether sports event contracts are federal derivatives or state gambling.
Kalshi moved it to federal court, the same jurisdictional argument it has run since it sued New York's gaming regulator over a shutdown threat.
A House committee demanded KYC and trade surveillance records from Kalshi and Polymarket in May, with a June 5 deadline. Nasdaq's platform will layer on top of the Solidus Labs system that has run on the exchange since February.
