Meta Platforms (META.O) is developing a prediction-markets smartphone app to compete with Polymarket and Kalshi, the New York Times reported Tuesday, signalling a fresh diversification push that could open a high-engagement, data-rich revenue stream for the social-media giant.
For investors already tracking Meta’s aggressive moves into fintech – including its $900 million stake in India’s CRED payments platform – the prediction-markets project suggests CEO Mark Zuckerberg is systematically building adjacent monetisation channels beyond advertising.
Key Takeaways
- Zuckerberg directed a small internal team to build the app.
- The project targets Polymarket and Kalshi’s fast-growing user bases.
- Move adds to Meta’s widening fintech and engagement diversification push.
Market Reaction & Context
META.O shares have gained roughly 30% year-to-date heading into this report, outpacing the Nasdaq Composite’s approximate 15% advance over the same period, reflecting sustained investor confidence in Zuckerberg’s product-diversification strategy.1
Prediction markets have drawn surging retail and institutional interest following the 2024 U.S. election cycle, with Polymarket reportedly processing billions of dollars in contract volume and Kalshi securing regulatory clarity from U.S. derivatives authorities.
Detailed Analysis
The New York Times cited two employees with knowledge of the matter in reporting that Zuckerberg recently dispatched a small team to create the app, though a product name, launch timeline, and monetisation model were not disclosed.1
Meta’s potential entry would bring enormous scale advantages: the company’s family of apps – Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – reaches more than three billion daily active users, giving any new product immediate distribution that neither Polymarket nor Kalshi can match organically.
Prediction markets allow users to trade binary-outcome contracts on events ranging from election results to economic data releases, effectively crowdsourcing probability estimates. The format drives high session frequency and repeat engagement, two metrics that feed directly into Meta’s advertising yield model.
Regulatory exposure, however, is non-trivial. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has historically scrutinised event-contract platforms, and a Meta-branded entry would almost certainly attract heightened congressional and agency attention given the company’s scale and prior content-moderation controversies.
Competitive Positioning
Kalshi, which won a landmark federal court ruling in 2024 permitting it to offer election-outcome contracts, and Polymarket, which operates primarily via blockchain infrastructure, have so far occupied a niche that mainstream consumer-technology platforms have avoided.
Meta’s reported move echoes its 2012 Instagram acquisition and 2014 WhatsApp deal in that Zuckerberg appears to be targeting a rapidly growing engagement category before it matures into a defensible standalone business – though in this case the approach is organic rather than acquisitive.
A separate New York Times opinion piece published the same day argued that Meta has struggled to translate costly platform bets into durable competitive moats, noting the company poured an estimated $80 billion into its Reality Labs metaverse division between 2021 and 2026 with limited commercial return.2
Outlook
Meta did not respond publicly to the report, and no official comment from management was available at time of publication. Analysts covering META.O will likely focus forthcoming questions on whether prediction-market functionality would be embedded inside existing apps or launched as a standalone product, and on the regulatory strategy the company plans to deploy.
The scale of Meta’s existing user base means even a modest conversion rate to an active prediction-market product could generate material engagement and, over time, transaction-fee or advertising revenue that would be incremental to the core business.
Not investment advice. For informational purposes only.
References
1(May 8, 2026). “Mark Zuckerberg Is Running Meta Into the Ground”. The New York Times. Retrieved June 23, 2026.
2The New York Times (May 8, 2026). “Opinion | Mark Zuckerberg Is Running Meta Into the Ground”. Facebook/The New York Times. Retrieved June 23, 2026.
3The New York Times (November 30, 2022). “Video: Zuckerberg Says Social Media Is Still the Primary Focus of Meta”. The New York Times. Retrieved June 23, 2026.