Kalshi has officially launched Blanket, an AI tool developed in partnership with London-based financial economist Lauris Zminsky that helps small businesses identify and hedge operational risks using prediction market event contracts. According to reports from Fortune, the tool went live publicly this week after a quiet stealth period at tryblanket.app. The tool analyzes business risks tied to weather, energy prices, tariffs, elections and other events and recommends relevant Kalshi contracts without requiring institutional infrastructure. Independent fintech entrepreneur Zminsky, who describes himself as a "forward deployed philosopher," has stated his ambition to create "markets for all priceable states of the world." As reported by Fortune, Zminsky began experimenting with Kalshi's event contracts late last year as a way to prove that prediction markets could have "true, durable economic use" beyond pure speculation, with his first project built with a Kalshi employee to match S&P 500 companies' risk factors with existing Kalshi markets.
Blanket operates as a recommendation layer, not a trading platform, functioning like a risk consultant that speaks in prediction-market contracts rather than hourly billing rates. As reported by Fortune, the tool does not automatically place orders, control customer accounts, or handle funds. Business owners retain responsibility for reviewing the recommendations and deciding whether to trade through Kalshi. A typical query takes "maybe 30 seconds" for the AI to process and returns a short list of candidate markets with plain-English explanations of how each one maps onto a given business risk. The AI will also tell users when no suitable market exists and display "near misses," creating a kind of live wishlist of missing contracts that Kalshi's team can monitor as demand signals. A restaurant owner worried about brutal winter weather could use Blanket to surface weather-related contracts on Kalshi, while a manufacturer exposed to energy price spikes might find contracts tied to natural gas benchmarks.
Event contracts are derivatives whose payouts depend on whether a specified event occurs or a defined value is reached. According to crypto.news, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission cites corporate earnings, snowfall levels, economic indicators and hurricane damage as examples of outcomes that can underpin these contracts. A small business could provide information about its operations and the events most likely to disrupt them, with Blanket's AI system analyzing those exposures and recommending available contracts connected to the relevant outcome. The tool repositions Kalshi's prediction markets as functional risk management infrastructure, addressing the gap where small businesses lack the institutional infrastructure to access traditional hedging instruments like futures and options on commodity exchanges. Kalshi spokesperson explained that Blanket recommendations are tailored to insurance use cases, where "losses" mean the event you did not want to happen did not happen, while "wins" mean that it did occur.
The launch positions Kalshi to address the 33 million small businesses operating in the US who historically had no practical way to hedge against operational risks. As reported by Fortune, traditional hedging instruments require minimum contract sizes, margin accounts, and broker relationships that effectively lock out anyone without institutional infrastructure. A farmer can hedge corn prices on the CME, but a food truck operator cannot hedge against rainy July weather without jumping through hoops that cost more than the hedge is worth. Blanket removes this friction by wrapping Kalshi's existing marketplace in an AI interface that speaks plain English, lowering the knowledge barrier to something closer to filling out an insurance quote online. The product appears aimed at expanding Kalshi's user base beyond retail traders into the small-business market, with Kalshi's Nicholas Hull calling it a "massive growth segment" for the company.
Kalshi operates as a CFTC-designated contract market, a status it received in November 2020. The development follows Kalshi's move to expand beyond retail prediction trading, with the platform partnering with compliance technology provider Comply to help financial firms monitor employee activity involving event contracts. The planned integration will place Kalshi's trades within workplace surveillance systems already used to track stocks, bonds and cryptocurrencies. Kalshi has been quietly building the case for prediction markets as hedging instruments, with examples like a New York City bar using the platform to hedge $5,000 against an NBA promotion outcome in June 2026. For Kalshi, the stakes are clear: Robinhood's $156 million quarterly prediction markets revenue shows brokerage distribution is becoming a crowded auction, and owned verticals like corporate contracts are the escape. Kalshi spokesperson emphasized that the platform is "the safest venue for people to trade on," with every customer protection feature that state-regulated sportsbooks have, including deposit limits, self-exclusion options, and mental-health partnerships with firms like Birches Health for traders who feel uncomfortable with platform use.
