Key points
- S&P Dow Jones Indices licenses its benchmarks to Kalshi
- S&P DJI to build indexes from Kalshi data
- Kalshi floats an index of AI's effect on jobs
S&P Dow Jones Indices, a division of S&P Global (SPGI), has agreed to license its benchmarks to the prediction market Kalshi and build indexes from Kalshi's event-contract data, the companies announced on October 26.
One possible index could track expectations about AI's effect on employment, Kalshi said in a post on October 27. The companies haven't announced a first index or a launch date.
Under the agreement, Kalshi becomes a preferred prediction market platform licensed for event contracts tied to S&P DJI indices. S&P DJI, in turn, becomes a preferred provider for building indexes from Kalshi's contract data. Forthcoming Kalshi contracts tied to S&P DJI indices will settle against the official index values that S&P DJI publishes.
The companies also disclosed no contract specifications or financial terms. The joint release's only examples are indices "on economics, politics, and sports." Kalshi's post also suggests possible indexes tracking political power, supply chain risks, sports outcomes, and weather risks.
How an index of event contracts would work
An event contract pays out based on whether a specified outcome occurs. Its price can offer a view of how traders assess that outcome. Combining related contracts into an index, Kalshi says, would let people track how expectations change across a category of events.
Under Kalshi's description, S&P DJI would set the rules for which contracts go into an index, how they're combined, and how the index changes over time.
Kalshi already lists labor market contracts. Its tech layoff rate market, for example, pays out based on the information industry's layoffs and discharges rate for a given month. Kalshi hasn't said which contracts, if any, would be included in an AI employment index.
In September, Anthropic's economists published three scenarios for how AI could reshape the US economy through 2030, including its effect on jobs.
Kalshi says products built on the proposed indexes could give people diversified exposure to events or ways to hedge their impact, much as funds and derivatives are built around stock indexes.
Kalshi's S&P 500 contracts now come with a license
Kalshi has offered contracts on where the S&P 500 will trade since at least 2024. A November 2024 filing with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for one of those contracts said Kalshi "is not affiliated with Standard & Poor's." Kalshi says the new agreement lets it list contracts on the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and other S&P DJI indices that settle to official S&P DJI data. The Monday release still says S&P DJI does not sponsor, sell, or endorse Kalshi's S&P-based contracts.
"Kalshi's aspiration is to be the next great financial exchange," said Tarek Mansour, Kalshi's co-founder and chief executive, in the release. "S&P DJI is the gold standard for benchmarks."
Cathy Clay, chief executive of S&P Dow Jones Indices, said the deal "extends S&P DJI's role as the world's leading benchmark provider into one of the fastest-growing categories in financial markets."
Kalshi's contracts also reach customers through brokers. Robinhood (HOOD) added Crypto.com's prediction contracts in September, on top of the ones it already sources from Kalshi.
