Kalshi Partners With S&P Dow Jones to Expand Financial Event Markets

S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) has partnered with prediction market platform Kalshi to bring contracts tied to S&P DJI benchmarks onto a regulated-style event marketplace, according to an announcement from S&P Global. The collaboration positions S&P DJI’s published index values as the basis for settlement of relevant “event contracts,” effectively turning widely tracked financial benchmarks into reference points for probabilistic trading.

Beyond offering contracts, S&P DJI said it will also explore creating new indexes that use Kalshi market pricing to reflect expectations about future outcomes—such as economic developments, political results, and sporting events—rather than tracking the performance of traditional financial assets.

Key takeaways

• Kalshi will be a preferred platform for prediction contracts linked to S&P DJI benchmarks, with settlement based on official index values published by S&P DJI.
• S&P DJI plans to investigate indexes that translate Kalshi contract prices into measures of market expectations for non-financial outcomes.
• The announcement did not specify a launch timeline for either contracts or potential index development.
• The partnership follows a broader push from established market operators toward prediction markets and related infrastructure.

How the Kalshi deal ties benchmarks to prediction contracts

In its Monday announcement, S&P Dow Jones Indices said Kalshi will serve as a preferred venue for event contracts tied to S&P DJI indices. The key operational element is settlement: outcomes will be determined using official index values published by S&P DJI. That matters because index-based settlement is designed to reduce ambiguity about what counts as the “resolved” value of an event.

While the companies did not disclose when trading contracts—or any resulting index products—will begin, the structure indicates an attempt to align prediction market mechanics with a familiar benchmark governance model. For traders, that can lower friction: instead of relying on ad hoc resolution methods, contracts would be settled using an established index publication process.

From index performance to “expectation” pricing

S&P DJI also outlined a second avenue: it will explore building indexes that draw on prediction market prices. The planned approach would rely on prices from Kalshi’s event contracts to quantify market expectations about outcomes in areas such as economics, politics, and sports.

That framing highlights an important distinction from standard benchmark indexes. Rather than measuring what assets did over a period, these potential new gauges would be intended to represent what participants collectively believe is likely to happen next—capturing expectations through contract pricing. If implemented, that could give investors and analysts a new kind of “sentiment-and-expectations” indicator, derived from market-implied probabilities.

Still, the exact methodology and scope remain unknown. S&P DJI did not provide details on which contract types would be eligible, how far into the future contracts would resolve, or how volatility in prediction pricing would be handled within any index calculation framework.

Why this matters for traditional market operators and crypto-adjacent markets

The S&P DJI–Kalshi collaboration comes amid visible momentum from major players in traditional capital markets into prediction market infrastructure. Earlier moves cited in the coverage include Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), parent of the New York Stock Exchange, committing up to $2 billion to Polymarket in October 2025. Separately, Nasdaq filed to offer prediction market-style contracts tied to the Nasdaq 100 Index in March, before partnering with Kalshi in August to provide market surveillance technology.

Taken together, these developments suggest that prediction markets are no longer viewed only as niche platforms. Instead, established market infrastructure operators appear to be testing how prediction mechanisms can be reconciled with compliance expectations, surveillance, and settlement conventions used in mainstream markets.

For participants across the broader ecosystem—including crypto-related data providers and infrastructure builders—this direction may increase pressure to standardize resolution logic and risk controls. It could also make prediction market signals more legible to institutional users who are accustomed to benchmark-based reporting.

S&P Global’s parallel push into blockchain risk expertise

The Kalshi partnership was announced the same day S&P Global said it completed its acquisition of blockchain security firm OpenZeppelin, further expanding the group’s risk assessment capabilities for digital assets.

According to S&P Global, the deal—first announced in September—was completed without disclosure of financial terms. OpenZeppelin is known for smart contract security audits and development tools, and S&P Global said its open-source contract libraries underpin more than $38 trillion in value transferred. The firm’s security team has also conducted over 900 engagements, according to S&P Global.

OpenZeppelin will continue operating as its own business unit under founder Demian Brener, reporting to Yann Le Pallec, president of S&P Global Ratings. The acquisition is positioned as an extension of S&P Global’s existing work on digital asset risk assessment, particularly around smart contract security.

More broadly, earlier this month, S&P Global Ratings launched a framework for evaluating crypto lending vaults across six risk categories, including blockchain security, liquidity, and governance—coverage also reflected in prior reporting. While that effort is separate from prediction markets, it underscores a theme: major ratings and benchmark providers are expanding into areas where crypto markets often require specialized risk evaluation.

For builders and investors, the combined picture is notable. If traditional institutions are moving to use established benchmark settlement for prediction contracts, while simultaneously enhancing blockchain security and risk frameworks, then “institutional-grade” infrastructure may become a more common bridge between conventional finance and crypto-adjacent markets.

Readers should watch for when S&P DJI and Kalshi begin offering specific event contracts, and whether S&P DJI’s proposed expectation-based indexes move beyond exploration into an operational product—alongside any published details on methodology, eligible contract sets, and how uncertainty around outcomes is reflected in index construction.