Public's AI Agents Now Trade Event Contracts on Kalshi

New York-based investing app Public will let AI agents trade prediction markets directly through a partnership with Kalshi, one of the largest event-contract platforms in the U.S. The company announced the product on Wednesday.

Users define a strategy in plain language and instruct Public's AI on what they want done. The agent converts that request into fixed rules, which can range from sending an alert when odds change to automatically buying or selling an investment. Public aims the product at investors who want to use prediction-market data to track events that could affect their portfolios, such as Federal Reserve rate decisions, regulatory approvals or company metrics like quarterly shipments. Investors must approve the rules before the agent can act.

Under the tie-up, Kalshi provides the event contracts and handles the trades, while giving Public users access to its markets through Public's own platform.

"AI agents can do work for you, and in investing, that means they can monitor markets when you're not looking at a screen. They can execute strategies that you might have not been physically even able to execute yourself," Leif Abraham, Public's cofounder and co-CEO, told Fortune.

The launch anchors Public's push to position itself as an "agentic brokerage." Founded in 2019, the company counts Accel and Tiger Global among its backers and manages billions in assets across millions of users. Its target customer is the active, self-directed investor, not the client who hands a portfolio to a wealth manager.

That positioning doubles as a competitive wedge. Public is trying to separate itself from discount brokerages that compete largely on price. Its software is built to handle more of the routine work of managing a portfolio, rather than serving mainly as a place to execute trades.

Guardrails are central to the design. To prevent AI agents from making unintended trades, Public's chatbot converts each investor request into a visual plan. The user must review and approve the strategy before it runs as fixed code. Once activated, the agent cannot make trades outside the customer's chosen conditions.

The Public-Kalshi deal lands as agentic finance gains mainstream momentum, particularly in payments. Visa, Mastercard and Stripe have all built tools that let AI agents shop and pay on users' behalf.

Prediction markets have surged in the U.S. since the 2024 presidential election. Platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, where users trade on outcomes in politics, sports and culture, have reached multibillion-dollar valuations, and some contracts have generated billions in trading volume.

For Public, the product is a test of whether retail investors will delegate execution — not just research — to AI. If the approval-gated model holds up, expect the brokerage to press its agentic identity further as competitors race to add automation of their own.