Clear Street, a cloud-native financial infrastructure technology firm, has become the first futures commission merchant (FCM) to provide access to prediction market Kalshi, and has launched private markets research and access to private companies before they go public.

Andy Volz, co-president of Clear Street, told Markets Media that the firm has been successful by being an early mover in areas that it thinks are going to be important to its client base of institutional accounts and active traders. He added: “Prediction markets and private markets are two areas where we are differentiated from any other prime broker or clearing firm.”

Volz believes prediction markets are a structural shift in the industry.

For example, the Federal Reserve said in a research note that Kalshi markets provide a “high-frequency, continuously updated, distributionally rich benchmark that is valuable to both researchers and policymakers.”

In May this year Clear Street said it had become the first FCM to join Kalshi’s exchange and clearing house, which enables regulated, institutional access. Clear Street’s collaboration launched with institutional trading access to Kalshi’s 24/7 regulated event contracts and is expanding to include regulated clearing and settlement, large-scale risk transfer through block trading and infrastructure designed to scale the liquidity of Kalshi’s markets.

Max Crowley, vice president of business development at Kalshi, said in a statement: “Institutional demand for prediction markets is at a tipping point, and our clients have been clear about what they need to scale into the asset class: regulated clearing, deep institutional liquidity and the operational rigor of a modern infrastructure provider.”

Volz said Clear Street completed a full integration with Kalshi via their APIs and reflects pricing and the ability to buy and sell prediction market contracts in its front end. He added: “My guess is that we will eventually integrate all the prediction markets.”

Clear Street’s clients are predominantly interested in prediction markets across elections and traditional financial indicators, according to Volz. He argued that there are lots of ways to express a bet on, for example, the S&P 500 index through futures, options, swap and ETFs and that prediction markets will be similar.

“Markets need lots of ways to express a bet and that creates liquidity,” Volz added. “We have not seen a ton of activity as liquidity is not fully there yet, but it is progressing at a decent rate.”

He described prediction markets as similar to early-stage crypto, which took some time to gain institutional liquidity and acceptance.

As part of the partnership, Clear Street has also launched swap capabilities for exchange-traded fund issuers structuring listed investment products around prediction markets. Clear Street is a significant service provider to the thematic ETF community and many of those issuers are want to create ETFs tied to prediction markets, according to Volz.

ETF issuers Roundhill Investments, GraniteShares and Bitwise filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in February this year to launch funds based on prediction markets. Reuters reported in May that the SEC had delayed their launch and asked for more information.

“If regulators globally allow prediction markets to be wrapped into ETFs, I think the industry will grow astronomically,” he said. “It is going to come down to regulation and liquidity.”

Private markets

Clear Street has also been expanding in private markets. Volz argued that because Clear Street is not a bank, the firm has the ability to move fast, be an early mover and provide a lot of value. He said: “The ability to trade private securities inside our network is something we have talked about for a long time, and it has been very very well received.”

In July this year Clear Street announced the launch of Clear Street Private Markets to offering investors access, execution, liquidity, capital efficiency and private market research.

Clear Street Private Markets began with pre-IPO access to Databricks, the first in a pipeline of anticipated initial public offerings that will be available to qualified purchasers and accredited investor clients.

Uri Cohen, chief executive and co-founder of Clear Street, said in a statement that investors are demand exposure to the most important private companies before they list. Cohen added: “Our clients are particularly excited about our ability to offer margin within this ecosystem. It’s like nothing else available to investors today.”

In August this year the firm announced the launch of Clear Street Private Markets Equity Research, led by equity analyst Owen Lau. Clear Street said it seeks to address a gap investors commonly encounter in pre-IPO investing: limited, fragmented, or sell-side-only research on companies that are increasingly important to portfolios before they go public.

“Access without insight is only half the opportunity,” said Cohen. “We’re giving our clients the research to match the access we’ve already built, all within one platform.”

Digital assets

Clear Street announced in August this year that to had formed a strategic partnership with STS Digital Ltd., a Bermuda regulated principal trading firm specializing in digital asset derivatives, structured products and institutional liquidity.

Maxime Seiler, co-founder and chief executive of STS Digital, said in a statement that institutional investors expect the same quality of infrastructure, governance and risk management across both digital or traditional assets. Seiler said: “Combining Clear Street’s platform with STS Digital’s leadership in digital asset derivatives creates an offering that reflects where this market is heading over the next decade.”

The partnership pairs Clear Street’s prime brokerage, clearing and execution infrastructure with STS Digital’s regulated principal liquidity and derivatives expertise, giving institutional clients 24/7 access to sophisticated digital asset markets through a single cloud-native platform.

Equities

In traditional finance, Clear Street announced on 25 August 2026 that it had launched electronic execution in Europe and Asia-Pacific, extending its algorithmic trading offering beyond the U.S. and Canada for the first time.

Cohen said in a statement that Clear Street’s platform spans three regions giving institutional investors smart order routing and a single view of their positions wherever they trade, backed by 24-hour coverage. He added: “Launching Europe and Asia-Pacific together is a defining step in building our global platform and we’re just getting started.”

In EMEA, Clear Street now executes across primary exchanges in 22 markets, alongside dark venues, systematic internalizers, periodic auction books and ETF liquidity via RFQ (request for quote). In Asia-Pacific, the firm is live across Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore with South Korea and Taiwan to follow in the coming months.

Clear Street said the launch is paired with a 24-hour smart order router that gives clients overnight access to US equities from 8 p.m. ET to 4 a.m. ET, routing across Blue Ocean, Bruce, MOON and OTC Link N, who provide overnight trading in U.S. equities.