Cantor to serve as introducing broker for Kalshi
Cantor will act as an introducing broker for Kalshi, the regulated prediction-market exchange. The arrangement targets institutional clients seeking access to event contracts. Cantor's Brandon Lutnick had previously signaled the firm's push into prediction markets for institutional investors. Separately, BGC maintains a prediction-markets partnership with Fanatics. The deals reflect broker-dealer interest in capturing flows as prediction markets expand beyond retail traders.
Introducing-broker status lets Cantor feed its institutional client base directly into Kalshi's order book without standing up its own exchange infrastructure. That turns Cantor's existing relationships into captive flow Kalshi rivals cannot access through the same channel. For Polymarket and ForecastEx, the competitive cost is concrete: every desk Cantor onboards becomes a Kalshi-exclusive account unless rivals build comparable broker networks from scratch.
The timeline is now. BMLL and Coinbase-ION have already hardened Kalshi's institutional data and clearing stack this month; Cantor adds the last mile of client acquisition. The risk is dependency: if Kalshi's event-contract listings lag what institutions want to trade, Cantor's reputation suffers alongside its partner's.
This becomes Kalshi's third institutional clearing or data infrastructure advance in under ten days, after the Coinbase-ION clearing arrangement and the BMLL backtesting integration, as the exchange races to build a Wall Street-grade stack that Polymarket and ForecastEx must now match or concede institutional desks.