Polymarket to let users wager on brand popularity and public opinion in Kaito AI tie-up

Prediction market platform Polymarket has partnered with Kaito AI to roll out an “attention markets” expansion, allowing users to wager on social media-driven metrics, including brand popularity, trend mindshare, and public sentiment.

Forbes first reported the news on Tuesday, and Kaito confirmed the development in an X post moments later, terming it "the next stage in predicting internet trends."

The new markets will quantify changes in public attention based on aggregated data from social media platforms. According to the Forbes report, Kaito CEO Yu Hu said the firm pulls data from X, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to measure two specific metrics: "mindshare," or the volume of discussion, and "sentiment," whether the talk is positive or negative.

Polymarket's head of crypto, known as Thibault, told Forbes the platform will roll out dozens of these markets starting in early March. The plan is to scale to thousands by the end of the year.

Kaito stated in the X post that its attention markets will be built directly into its main site, with a new standalone site also planned. The firm said it will roll out the product in stages, starting with crypto and expanding into AI, finance, entertainment, sports, geopolitics, and other culturally relevant domains.

Kaito CEO Yu Hu told Forbes the company’s data and Polymarket’s trading activity could provide a more accurate measure of public opinion than traditional surveys or polls. Polymarket itself has relied on Kaito data to track its own popularity, and the two companies began formally collaborating on attention markets over the past year.

Prediction markets boom

The development comes amid sustained growth across the prediction markets sector. According to The Block’s data dashboard, Polymarket posted $7.66 billion in trading volume in January, a 44% increase from $5.31 billion in December. Rival platform Kalshi recorded $9.55 billion in January volume, a 45% increase from the prior month.

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Meanwhile, Kaito has also been building attention markets for a separate prediction market startup, Noise. Noise, which launched its beta last May, is a perpetual market where users take long or short positions on Kaito's mindshare and sentiment data. Noise raised $7.1 million in a January funding round led by Paradigm.