Moon Intelligence launches venture capital platform to accelerate US expansion

Abi Bray

14 January 2026 at 7:03am UTC-5

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London-based sports data consultancy, Moon Intelligence, plans to launch a venture capital platform as it begins to accelerate its expansion into the US.

Entrepreneurs in the gambling markets will be the primary market for the platform, as it is designed to attract small businesses in the early stages.

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The firm will provide funding and mentoring to betting start-ups, helping them grow their businesses and offer access to Moon Intelligence’s data and network of partners.

Moon Intelligence Co-Founder and Chief Executive Alexandre Luneau said, “We are open to working with various types of projects… We hope that by launching an official venture capital arm for the company, we can grab more attention from entrepreneurs who need an experienced partner.”

The venture capital addition will support the provider’s expansion strategy into US markets, as well as its product offerings, to provide US prediction markets with further liquidity through its market-making trading model, along with its team of 50 analysts.

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Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Moon Intelligence, Sebastien Sabic, added, “The initial wave of investments we made in start-ups and entrepreneurs proved highly beneficial for the company, and showcases our flexibility in how we can develop concepts to new heights.”

In December, Moon Intelligence signed a multi-year agreement with data provider 55 Tech as part of its expansion into the US, gaining odds feeds from over 300 bookmakers across the US, Europe, and Asia.

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The Backstory

Planting stakes for a U.S. push

Moon Intelligence’s decision to launch a venture capital arm fits a broader campaign to break into U.S. prediction markets by seeding the ecosystem it aims to serve. The London-based sports data consultancy says the vehicle will back early-stage gambling-market entrepreneurs with capital, mentoring and access to its data and counterparties. The strategy is designed to pull promising start-ups into Moon’s orbit while reinforcing a core business goal: supplying liquidity to prediction platforms through a market-making model powered by artificial intelligence and a 50-person analyst bench.

The venture move arrives as prediction markets accelerate in the U.S., drawing fresh users, capital and scrutiny. It also reflects a bet that the sector’s next leg of growth will come from deeper market quality — tighter spreads, faster pricing and a wider slate of tradable events — all of which rely on data and liquidity providers. By funding builders in adjacent niches, Moon is positioning itself not only as a participant in U.S. markets but as a catalyst for their scale-up.

Building the pipes: data and leadership

Moon has been shoring up its infrastructure for months. A multi-year data partnership with 55 Tech gives the firm aggregated odds feeds from more than 300 bookmakers across the U.S., Europe and Asia. The deal, which is being integrated into Moon’s AI-driven market-making stack, aims to deliver broader and faster inputs for pricing and risk, a prerequisite for supporting deeper liquidity across sports and event categories. For a company entering a market where milliseconds and market depth can define user experience, the data firehose is as much a strategic moat as an operational necessity.

Talent moves have mirrored the technical buildout. Moon added Stephen Shaw as chief operations officer and Enda Kendrick as chief customer officer, a pair of hires tied directly to its U.S. prediction-market ambitions. The company said both leaders will help scale technology, operational rigor and client-facing capabilities as it “applies its model to U.S. prediction platforms.” The appointments were detailed in an earlier leadership announcement that also underscored an industry pivot: major sportsbooks FanDuel and DraftKings exited the American Gaming Association while signaling plans to launch prediction products despite pushback. The message was clear — incumbents and new entrants are converging on a market once considered niche.

When prediction meets prime time

The timing is not accidental. A surge in user interest following last year’s presidential election has bled into sports and event contracts, pushing volumes to records and broadening the investor base. At the same time, sports betting continues to set new benchmarks. H2 Gambling Capital forecast that the upcoming Super Bowl could draw more than $1.6 billion in legal wagers at U.S. sportsbooks, a 17% jump from last year’s handle, with New York expected to lead by state. Those projections, outlined in H2’s Super Bowl outlook, frame a consumer market that is becoming more comfortable with risk-based products across both regulated gambling and financial-style prediction venues.

For platforms, the crossover matters. Users who graduate from fixed-odds bets to event contracts tend to demand tighter spreads, faster settlement and transparent pricing. That raises the bar for liquidity providers and data firms competing to become the backbone of an always-on market. Moon’s venture arm is a signal that the company sees gaps — in tools, analytics, market operations and user experience — that start-ups can fill, provided they have capital and access to institutional-grade inputs.

Robinhood’s catalyst and the regulatory map

No player has done more to mainstream event contracts this year than Robinhood. The broker’s prediction platform, launched in partnership with Kalshi in March, has become a major flow driver; Robinhood users now account for an estimated 25% to 35% of Kalshi’s daily volume, according to comments from Robinhood executive JB Mackenzie. He said the company is weighing acquisitions, joint ventures or partnerships to accelerate growth, even as its engineering team ships new products. Investor interest has piled in elsewhere too. Intercontinental Exchange, parent of the New York Stock Exchange, disclosed a $2 billion investment in Polymarket, underscoring how institutional capital is circling the space.

Robinhood is also testing the waters abroad. It has opened talks with overseas regulators, including the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, to map how prediction products fit into local regimes. In the U.S., the Commodity Futures Trading Commission treats event contracts as futures; in many countries, they fall under gambling oversight. Mackenzie stressed an approach that avoids controversial listings while pursuing regulatory clarity, as outlined in Robinhood’s overseas expansion plans. The company has already reported $200 million in revenue tied to sports betting and events contracts, illustrating the commercial stakes of getting the framework right.

This regulatory patchwork is the backdrop for Moon’s U.S. expansion. A venture arm gives the company optionality: it can back teams building within compliant lanes and adapt its liquidity services to the contours of each market. As the rules evolve, ownership stakes in key infrastructure or front-end products could become strategic levers.

Liquidity as the hinge

Prediction markets are only as good as the liquidity behind them. Without enough counterparties, spreads widen, prices stale and the user experience degrades. Moon’s model — combining global odds data, AI and human analysts — targets that bottleneck. The 55 Tech partnership supplies real-time, multi-bookmaker signals to inform pricing and inventory, while the leadership hires aim to institutionalize operations and customer support for U.S. platforms. The new venture arm extends the approach upstream by fostering products that can generate or attract flow, from market-making tools to risk analytics and market operations software.

The firm’s narrative over the past several months has been consistent: assemble the pipes, recruit the operators, then amplify the flywheel with capital. Early internal investments “proved highly beneficial,” company officials have said, and formalizing a VC strategy is meant to scale that playbook. If successful, Moon could become a preferred partner for U.S. platforms racing to meet demand without compromising execution quality.

What’s next

Three signposts will determine whether the strategy pays off. First, integration speed with data partners and platform clients — the faster Moon can feed markets with deeper liquidity and better pricing, the more defensible its role becomes. Second, the cadence of regulatory clarity in the U.S. and abroad, which will set boundaries for product design and listing policies. Third, the competitive posture of incumbents. If sportsbooks expand into compliant prediction products and brokers like Robinhood keep adding users and markets, the arms race for liquidity will intensify.

For now, capital is flowing, volumes are rising and the gap between gambling and financial prediction products is narrowing. Moon’s venture arm is both a bet on that convergence and a bid to shape it.