Meta is building a standalone prediction-market app intended to rival sites like Kalshi and Polymarket, according to internal documents obtained by NPR and reporting first published by The New York Times. Two employees, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss the project, said CEO Mark Zuckerberg has directed a team to create an app the company has been referring to as Arena.
The documents — which also use the codenames Antwerp and FBForecast for the project — describe a service that would let people bet on the outcomes of real-world events without wagering real cash. Instead of money, users would receive a daily allotment of virtual “play money” to trade on yes-or-no questions about future events.
Meta plans to lean heavily on its artificial intelligence tools to power the product. The app will use Llama, Meta’s large language model, to automatically generate market questions from trending topics and to provide personalized market recommendations to users. The documents also state that AI will be responsible for resolving markets — deciding whether an event did or did not occur — in near real time.
Meta previously experimented with prediction markets in 2020 with an app called Forecast, which let users make crowdsourced predictions including about the pandemic. That effort was shut down two years later; the internal documents say manual question curation and its operational costs were a key reason for closing it. The current project is described internally as a rebuild that substitutes AI for much of that manual work.
When a prototype is ready, Meta employees will test the app before a broader release on iPhone and Android. The documents do not include a public launch date, and Meta declined to comment.
The company’s choice to launch without real-money betting is notable because platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket attract users largely through the possibility of financial gain. Legal uncertainty may be driving Meta’s cautious approach: prediction markets sit in a contested regulatory and legal space, with more than 30 pending lawsuits challenging whether such platforms fall under Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversight. Gaming lawyer Daniel Wallach told NPR that a non-monetized rollout could buy Meta time to seek licensing or wait for a clearer regulatory picture.
The prediction-market sector has gained fast interest from a variety of players. Traditional sports-betting operators like DraftKings and FanDuel have added prediction products; social platforms including Truth Social have announced plans; and dozens of startups have launched or announced prediction-market projects. Some analysts have predicted the industry could expand dramatically in the coming years.
Concerns persist around market manipulation, insider trading, and whether incentivized markets can create perverse outcomes by shaping behavior rather than merely forecasting it. Those issues have prompted legal challenges and scrutiny even as some regulators and policymakers consider revising rules to accommodate or control prediction-market activity.
Meta’s massive user base — more than 3 billion people use at least one of its apps daily — could give the company a broad audience for any new product, but the company has also struggled historically to launch successful standalone apps. The internal documents show Meta is banking on AI automation to reduce operational costs and scale the service, a move that will likely intensify debate about automation, accuracy, and accountability in resolving real-world events through algorithmic decision-making.