AppliedXL Partners with Kalshi to Resolve Biopharma Prediction Markets
New markets put a public probability on clinical trials and FDA approvals, with contracts resolved against the primary regulatory and clinical record.
Today AppliedXL and Kalshi, the first regulated exchange for events in the U.S., announce a pilot partnership to bring prediction markets to biopharma. Kalshi is launching contracts on clinical trial outcomes and FDA drug approvals. AppliedXL is the exclusive resolution partner, helping curate the markets and resolving every contract against the primary regulatory and clinical record.
Each contract poses one question, such as whether the FDA will approve a given drug by a set date, and its price is the probability: a contract at $0.72 means the market puts the odds near 72%. One drug, one question, one price.
The odds that a drug will succeed are among the most valuable numbers in the economy, and among the least visible. Banks, expert networks, and the drugmakers themselves all produce estimates, but they stay behind closed doors, and even the official public record is incomplete: as of the FDA's April 2026 figures, roughly 30% of trials required to report their results had posted none. This pilot creates the first tradeable, continuously updated public probability on drug development available on a regulated U.S. exchange. A number anyone can see, and anyone can challenge with money.
"Drug development is one of the most important and most information-constrained industries on earth. The data that determines which drugs advance and which don't is largely locked away from the people who need it most. Surfacing information is what Kalshi is for, and we are committed to doing it right: compliance-first, carefully scoped, and built for the long term." — Tarek Mansour, CEO, Kalshi
What the resolution partner does
A market is only as trustworthy as the answer it settles on, and in biopharma the answer is buried in a sprawling, inconsistent public record. Each contract specifies a named public document as its resolution source, whether the registered primary endpoint on ClinicalTrials.gov, the FDA approval letter, or the advisory committee vote record, with the criteria for reading that document defined before the contract opens for trading, not after results arrive.
AppliedXL's technology detects the triggering event and extracts the outcome, domain experts confirm it, and each settlement carries an audit trail to a human signature that a regulator can inspect and a counterparty can dispute. Outcomes are determined by independent public artifacts, not by sponsor communications or analyst interpretation.
AppliedXL employees are prohibited from trading on prediction markets.
For a step-by-step walkthrough of one market settling against the public record, see How a Fact Becomes a Settlement.
"Clinical trial results are rarely handed to you cleanly. They come out in pieces, scattered across registries, regulatory filings, and company statements, and the press releases often put a favorable spin on what the data actually shows. Resolving a market means reconciling all of that back to the primary source, which is what we built AppliedXL to do." — Francesco Marconi, CEO, AppliedXL
The report: Biopharma's Public Probability
Alongside the launch, AppliedXL and Kalshi are publishing Biopharma's Public Probability: The State and Future of Prediction Markets in Drug Development, a joint whitepaper examining what prediction markets can do for drug development, the risks they carry, and the standards required for them to function reliably.
Biopharma News
To bring more transparency to biopharma, AppliedXL is also launching Biopharma News, the first AI-powered newsroom for the pharma industry, providing real-time coverage of clinical trial results, FDA decisions, and drug development milestones, including the markets now live on Kalshi. It runs on the AppliedXL platform, the same technology that resolves these markets by turning institutional records into signals, forecasts, and verified outcomes.