Onyx Odds Raises $20 Million in Round Led by Kraken Parent Payward
Sports betting app Onyx Odds has raised $20 million in a funding round led by Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken. The deal places crypto-adjacent capital behind a new entrant in the prediction markets space,…
HONG KONG— June 25, 2026
Sports betting app Onyx Odds has raised $20 million in a funding round led by Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken. The deal places crypto-adjacent capital behind a new entrant in the prediction markets space, where Kalshi and Polymarket already hold dominant positions.
Payward as Lead Investor
The identity of the lead investor is the most telling detail in this raise. Payward, the corporate entity that controls Kraken, is primarily known as a crypto exchange operator. Its decision to lead the Onyx Odds round connects the sports betting app to the crypto industry's longstanding interest in prediction markets, where outcome-based contracts have found a natural fit with blockchain settlement infrastructure. Whether Onyx Odds itself is built on blockchain infrastructure is not disclosed in available information.
A $20 Million Entry Ticket Into a Two-Player Race
Twenty million dollars is a meaningful raise for a betting app, but the prediction markets space Onyx Odds is entering already has an organizing principle: Kalshi and Polymarket are the dominant market leaders, which in marketplace terms means they hold the liquidity and user bases that any new entrant needs to displace or outflank. The mechanism matters here. Prediction markets are two-sided — Onyx Odds needs both buyers and sellers of outcome contracts for each event it lists, or spreads widen and participants migrate to the deeper platform. Network effects entrench early movers, and Kalshi and Polymarket have already navigated the liquidity bootstrapping problem. Onyx Odds starts from zero on that count.
Sports Betting as a Wedge
The "sports betting app" framing may be Onyx Odds' most deliberate strategic choice. A focused vertical is a narrower pitch than the general prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket serve. The wedge strategy assumes sports bettors represent a distinct user segment those two players have not fully captured. Whether that assumption holds — and whether Onyx Odds has built a product compelling enough to pull those users away from the fixed-odds platforms they already use — is a separate question from whether it can raise capital. The $20 million answers the latter.
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