#668
Each Way Bet
Published:
Nov 14, 2026
Author:
Sarah Parsons Wolter
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Financialization took 40 years to turn every asset into a tradable claim, and predictionization is doing the same to every event in about four. CBS News ran Kalshi’s odds alongside its own midterm polling, and Kalshi says traders were hours ahead of the networks on most races.
Britons will find this less novel. Betting there has been around longer than the United States has, and the Life Assurance Act of 1774 had to ban wagering on strangers’ lives two years before U.S. independence. America’s contribution has, of course, been to put a CFTC license on the bookmaker and call it a derivative. William Hill, by legend, once laid a Glaswegian postman 20,000,000/1 that Elvis would crash a UFO into Loch Ness.
This week, a Polymarket contract on OpenAI listing at a $1.5t valuation is the rough economic equivalent of owning a share, without OpenAI filing a single page of an S-1. Robinhood, built on free stock trades, booked $173m of revenue from event contracts last quarter, against $121m from equities and $120m from crypto.
Which brings us to naughty Nvidia. CEO Jensen admitted to an affair with an alleged Chinese spy, the shares fell 4.3% on Monday, erasing nearly $200b of market value, and a shareholder class action followed. Within a day, Kalshi and Polymarket listed contracts on when he leaves, each drawing roughly $300,000 of volume. Britain may have outlawed wagering on the lives of strangers in 1774, but America has turned it into key-man insurance.
Portfolio News
Nexu secures MXN 1b credit line from BBVA Spark - Mexican auto-finance fintech Nexu closed a MXN 1b revolving credit line with BBVA Spark, rated by Moody's. The funding will let Nexu place more than 10,000 additional auto loans through its network of 3,000 dealers, distributors and partner brands across Mexico. Read more
FinRank: loan payments are banking's cheapest marketing channel - A CUInsight op-ed argues that monthly loan payments are banking's most reliable, zero-cost engagement channel and should be redesigned as loyalty moments with progress, milestones and equity context, the principle behind FinRank's Rory product. Read more
Simetrik CFO says systems of record have hit their limit - Simetrik CFO Felipe Pardo argues that systems of record store data but cannot operate finance workflows, and that they must evolve into AI-driven Smart Systems of Operation that encode local rules to reconcile, manage disputes, file taxes and report. Read more
HelmGuard CEO John Daley on rebuilding AI governance - HelmGuard co-founder and former Palantir executive John Daley argues governance must be rebuilt as infrastructure for agentic AI, with independent supervising agents checking every action against policy rather than relying on summary-level reports that agents completed tasks. Read more
Flutterwave launches ₦10b SME growth fund - The ₦10b SME Growth and Financing Initiative aims to accelerate digital commerce in Nigeria, giving registered merchants instant working capital advances, zero settlement fees for a promotional period, and integrated omni-channel point-of-sale tools to help them scale. Read more
Each Way Bet
Nvidia shareholders sue Jensen Huang over alleged spy affair - A shareholder class action filed in San Jose federal court accuses Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang of misleading investors by not disclosing his affair with an alleged Chinese intelligence agent tied to chip buyer Megaspeed. Nvidia fell $7.97 Monday, erasing about $190b in value. Read more
Industry News
Paul Christensen's new book, How Fintech Founders Win - Long-time friend of the firm Paul Christensen's new book explores eight category-defining fintech companies, uncovering the strategies behind their success and lessons for entrepreneurs and investors. Read more
The 31-year-old short seller who flagged Nvidia's China problem - The WSJ profiles Christian Lamarco of Culper Research, whose largely ignored May report flagged Nvidia's China chip diversion risk and Jensen Huang's ties to Alice Huang of Megaspeed. Six months on, amid the scandal, the research has gone viral and Nvidia has shed more than $1tn in market value. Read more
British fintech Revolut slashes AI coding costs 10x by cutting out Claude and going self-hosted - Revolut slashed AI coding costs by 90% by replacing Claude with self-hosted Chinese open-weight models. Across 2,000 engineers, coding time improved 60%, highlighting how cheaper inference unlocks productivity gains beyond writing code. Read more
AI is letting anyone reverse engineer anything. We talked to the developer at the center of it - Scientific American profiles Morluto, the pseudonymous creator of REA (Reverse Engineer Anything), a viral AI tool that lets AI agents decompile and modify proprietary software in everything from printers to smart TVs and cars. It threatens software companies' competitive moats while raising profound questions about intellectual property, security, and safety. Read more
Howard Marks on AI's investment paradox - Oaktree's Howard Marks argues AI is the most consequential and least predictable investment development in a generation. With trillions flowing into infrastructure, uncertain moats and rising AI-related debt, he urges investors to participate with calibrated humility, disciplined position sizing and close attention to price. Read more
Hedge funds like AQR move into sports betting - Quant firms are eyeing sports betting and prediction markets as a new source of mispriced odds. AQR co-founder Cliff Asness said the firm is looking at it, and AQR has advertised a prediction-markets quant research VP role paying $235,000 to $260,000. Read more
United Airlines bans AI agents from booking flights - United Airlines will block personal AI assistants from booking tickets on its systems, citing data-privacy, security and FAA rule concerns. CEO Scott Kirby's bigger worry is a new middleman, echoing past fights with online travel agencies, while Delta, American and Southwest take friendlier approaches to agentic commerce. Read more
Morgan Stanley to buy Vinyl Equity in wealth expansion - Morgan Stanley agreed to acquire Vinyl Equity, a digital transfer agent, bringing share transfers for corporate stock plans and IPOs in-house. Following its EquityZen purchase, the deal strengthens its workplace wealth channel, which already drives over $100b a year in wealth management referrals. Read more
AI agents barely dent Uber, DoorDash and online travel - Consumer platforms report negligible AI agent traffic. DoorDash saw only several hundred agent orders against 993 million in Q3, and Uber logged just 500 Eats orders over Halloween week. Users prefer trusted apps, and Uber, DoorDash, Booking and Expedia are investing to own the customer relationship. Read more
Crypto's push into stock trading accelerates despite backlash - OKXICE, the OKX and ICE joint venture, plans to launch a stock-token platform on Nov. 23 listing more than 70 tokenized stocks and ETFs, though McDonald's, Coca-Cola and JPMorgan blocked their shares from being traded on the venue. Read more
Doomsday postcode checker rates your home's apocalypse odds - A Ukrainian entrepreneur's Doomsday postcode checker grades UK locations from A to G on wartime safety, weighing proximity to military and nuclear sites, terrain, buildings and emergency healthcare. Rural areas, Northern Ireland and Wales score best, London poorly, and Gosport worst. Read more
Select Financings
Alta - San Francisco based blockchain infrastructure platform raised $47.5m in Series A funding led by Index Ventures. Read more
Ancep - London based AI agent platform automating commercial insurance placement raised $8.5m in new funding led by Creandum. Read more
Clara - São Paulo based corporate spend management platform raised $105m in Series C funding led by Citius, Kaszek Ventures and DEG. Read more
geniosAI - San Jose based AI financial intelligence platform for banks, investment teams and CFOs raised $19.1m in combined seed and Series A funding led by FactSet. Read more
Griffin - London based embedded banking platform for fintechs and platforms raised $20m in Series B funding led by Octagon Partners. Read more
Imprint - New York based co-branded credit cards platform raised $130m in new funding led by Khosla Ventures. Read more
Index Industries - New York based developer of blockchain infrastructure for property investment products raised $50m in Seed funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Read more
Kabilio - Barcelona based AI accounting platform for accounting firms and their SME clients raised €10m in new funding led by Picus Capital and Visionaries. Read more
Light Frame - Lausanne based core banking and portfolio management software for private banks and wealth managers raised $5.1m in Seed funding led by Fortino Ventures. Read more
Marble - New York based capital markets infrastructure platform for frontier markets raised $11m in Seed funding led by Polychain Capital. Read more
Numina - Copenhagen based free accounting platform for small businesses raised €1.1m in pre-Seed funding led by Nebular. Read more
Operand - San Francisco based AI due-diligence platform for private equity firms raised $31m in combined seed and Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures. Read more
Palomma - Medellín based AI leasing software, rent payments and financing platform for property managers raised $10m in Series A funding led by Cometa. Read more
Planky - London based AI-driven financial data intelligence platform raised €6.9m in new funding led by Innovation Global and Azimut Venture Capital. Read more
Ridero - New York based AI-powered automotive finance infrastructure platform raised $2.7m in pre-Seed funding led by RiverPark Ventures. Read more
Snaplii - Toronto based fintech infrastructure platform for AI agent spending raised $15m in new funding led by Hat-Trick Capital. Read more
Sumary - Copenhagen based AI-powered accounting software raised $25m in Seed funding led by Singular. Read more
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