Good morning. Polymarket makes a business out of uncertainty. Now it’s bringing some certainty to its own finances by hiring seasoned CFO Warren Jenson as its first finance chief.
Jenson, who has served as CFO of Amazon, Electronic Arts, Delta Air Lines, and NBC (then a General Electric business) as well as Nielsen, will lead Polymarket’s finance organization, set financial and capital strategy, strengthen planning, and build infrastructure for its next phase, the company announced Thursday.
Shayne Coplan, founder and CEO of Polymarket, said Jenson led finance at “some of the most consequential companies in the world, and his experience will be critical to everything we build from here.”
Jenson’s hire also lands at a pivotal financial moment: Polymarket is raising about $1 billion led by the venture firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, 1789 Capital, at a valuation of roughly $21 billion, which is a 40% jump from the $15 billion mark it garnered just months ago.
Jenson most recently served as president and CFO at Nielsen, where he led the company’s modernization and analytics business. Before that, he was president at LiveRamp, where he led finance and international efforts.
“I’m joining Shayne and the leadership team to put the capital strategy and operating discipline in place to move quickly at scale and continue to push the frontier of this industry,” Jenson said in a statement.
Polymarket is a six-year-old crypto-native prediction market. The company announced in March that it was acquiring Brahma, a startup specializing in crypto and DeFi infrastructure for businesses and individuals managing digital assets, Fortune previously reported.
Instead of hiring someone from crypto or fintech, Polymarket tapped Jenson, with extensive experience at established large companies. But Shawn Cole, president and co-founder of Cowen Partners Executive Search, said he sees some synergy in Jenson’s background.
Nielsen and Polymarket share some similarities, Cole told me. “Both are data-driven businesses built around measuring, interpreting, and monetizing information at scale, with significant technology, regulatory, and institutional-market complexity,” he said.
Polymarket is working to scale its CFTC-regulated U.S. exchange and expand its global platform. It’s also hiring compliance roles that reference SEC regulatory experience, potentially signaling future filings, Cole said. “A CFO like Jenson adds credibility, public-market experience, and potentially valuable market relationships,” he said.
But Cole points out that Polymarket differs sharply from Nielsen in terms of risk. It’s operating in relatively new and evolving regulatory territory, with the potential for extensive scrutiny that could become political and involve agencies such as the Justice Department.
“That makes this a much heavier lift than stepping into an establishment like his past employers,” Cole said.
Polymarket, Kalshi, and other prediction markets allow participants to wager on probable outcomes, with contracts typically priced between 1 and 99 cents. The sector has certainly grown in popularity. Four-time NBA champion LeBron James has partnered with Polymarket on a campaign focused primarily on football.
Election-season trading, including this fall, is surging. But losses can be costly. A recent BadCredit.org study found that 79% of prediction-market users lost money in the past year, while 51% used credit cards, personal loans, or other borrowed funds to place bets.
That math is the real bet here: investors are pricing in Jenson’s ability to manage the regulatory risk, not just the accounting.
Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl.Estrada@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com