Jump Trading has doubled its prediction markets team this year as record trading volumes convince the firm the sector is growing.
Elite privately held high-frequency trading firm Jump Trading has expanded its prediction markets team to about 20 people and plans to keep hiring, Simon Johansen, the firm’s head of prediction markets, told Bloomberg in an interview published Thursday.
Jump is one of the first major market makers to embrace prediction markets, which let traders buy and sell contracts on prediction markets.
The firm began trading on Kalshi and Polymarket and has agreements to receive small equity stakes in both companies in exchange for providing liquidity.
Read also: Mark Zuckerberg Takes On Polymarket and Kalshi — Meta Is Launching Its Own Prediction Market
“The Most AI-Resistant Industry”
Johansen now says the firm is recruiting way beyond Wall Street’s traditional quantitative trading pipeline. For instance, recent hires include people with backgrounds in sports betting and even a former Big Four accounting employee, Bloomberg writes.
And Johansen expects the growth to continue. He said trading volume on this year’s Super Bowl was roughly 10 times higher than in 2025, the first year Americans could legally trade Super Bowl prediction contracts, and predicted another tenfold increase by the 2027 event. He added:
“It’s probably the most AI-resistant industry that exists. People are always going to want to watch sports. The way that we’re building the business is that we want to be able to trade anything and everything where there’s opportunity.”
The hiring comes as activity on prediction platforms continues to accelerate. Combined trading volume on Kalshi and Polymarket nearly doubled from May to a record $44 billion in June, per Dune Analytics data.
Read more: Polymarket Trading Volume Drops for First Time Since August. Kalshi Takes the Lead
