Kalshi is adding bets on whole sectors, like retail foot traffic and app downloads, giving investors a way to back a trend without picking one stock.
Kalshi, a platform where people put money on how events turn out, is adding bets on business data such as store traffic and app downloads across whole sectors. Instead of betting on ChatGPT downloads alone, a user could bet on AI app downloads in general.
The contracts are built with data firm Carbon Arc. They track sector figures like point-of-sale data, which is sales recorded at checkout, and app downloads. Kalshi already offers markets on Tesla production by quarter, ChatGPT downloads, Claude downloads and Cava foot traffic. Kalshi's Jack Such said the goal is to "ETF-ify" these markets. An ETF is a fund whose return depends on a basket of stocks.
Such said using a stock to express a view often fails. You can be right about the trend, yet the stock can move the other way for many reasons. He said ETFs offer similar protection, but these contracts let people take a view on a business measure that may not show up in one company's results.
Hedge funds have used this kind of information for years. Some use satellite images of Walmart parking lots to gauge customer flow. Carbon Arc CEO Kirk McKeown, who previously led proprietary research at Point72, wants small investors to get the same type of data. "It was really a pricing and access problem," he said.
The material does not say when the new contracts go live, which sectors they will cover or what they will cost to trade. They are still bets, and money put into them can be lost.
Kalshi's sector contracts let you bet on a trend instead of one stock, but they are still bets and you can lose what you put in.
Visa tested 22 AI models on realistic shopping tasks. They passed just over half, and often bought the wrong thing anyway.
Read more: Visa tested 22 AI shoppers, and most still make costly mistakesDARPA wants AI to hunt for design flaws in stock, bond, energy and cloud markets, so enemies cannot use them to cause economic damage that reaches households.
Read more: Pentagon wants AI to find weak spots in stock and energy marketsTuring Award winner Richard Sutton says more computing power alone will not make AI truly smart. Big AI companies disagree, which matters for anyone betting on AI.
Read more: AI pioneer says piling on computing power won't make machines smart
