A team of former Wall Street quantitative traders has secured $8.5 million in Series A funding to launch River Markets, billed as the first institutional-grade prime brokerage platform for prediction markets. Haun Ventures led the round, joined by Coinbase Ventures, Y Combinator, Qube Research & Technologies, and individual backers from Citadel, JPMorgan, and Google.
River Markets addresses critical fragmentation plaguing prediction markets, where liquidity is scattered across multiple venues including Kalshi, Polymarket, and Novig. The platform offers smart order routing, consolidated position dashboards, and institutional-grade risk controls through a single execution layer. Founded by Oscar Levy, former VP of Quantitative Strategy at BlackRock, and Antonin Perrot, who worked in electronic trading at Morgan Stanley and high-frequency trading at Valkyrie, the company evolved from custom trading software the pair built in 2023.
The move signals growing institutional interest in prediction markets, which currently lack the sophisticated infrastructure professional traders demand for efficient cross-venue execution and risk management.
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FXnCO Insight
** Institutional capital is preparing to enter prediction markets at scale—firms without consolidated execution capabilities risk being left behind as this asset class professionalizes rapidly.
Source: Finance Magnates