ByCoinGape
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Pascal:- It was a deal at first sight for Union Square Ventures and Pascal. The $3 billion VC giant, said it knew after its first meeting with founders Ivo Crnkovic-Rubsamen and Matthew Downey that it wanted to partner with them..
The venture capital giant is best known for backing category-defining companies, such as Coinbase, X (formerly Twitter), Etsy and Tumblr, the nearly $3 billion VC firm.
Now, USV has led Pascal’s Series A funding round, bringing the Wintermute-backed prediction markets startup’s total capital raised to $15 million.
The latest investment marks Pascal’s first institutional round led by USV after previously raising seed funding from DBA and Wintermute Ventures. While the company did not disclose the size of the Series A separately, the latest raise brings its cumulative funding to $15 million.
We’re thrilled to announce our Series A with @usv bringing our total fundraising up to 15m. We hit it off with @fredwilson right away and we’re excited to benefit from his incredible experience. pic.twitter.com/xSvgViji73
— pascal (@pascaldottrade) July 16, 2026
Interestingly, Pascal’s founders Ivo and Matthew are two former traders who previously worked together at decentralized derivatives exchange dYdX.
Before launching Pascal, the founders concluded that existing prediction market platforms lacked many of the features expected from mature financial exchanges.
Instead of competing solely on consumer adoption, Pascal is building exchange-grade infrastructure designed for active traders.
Built on Solana, the platform combines on-chain collateral with an off-chain matching engine to deliver faster execution without taking custody of user assets.
As per its official documentation, Pascal’s infrastructure includes separate trading keys, 50-millisecond order matching, capital-efficient collateral management, maker rebates.
It has APIs designed for algorithmic traders. These are the features more commonly associated with professional crypto exchanges than prediction markets. USV described Pascal as “an exchange built entirely by traders for traders.”
Pascal emerged from stealth and entered private beta a few weeks ago. However, the company says it has already processed more than 2 million contracts.
Notably, USV highlighted that the trading activity came without liquidity mining incentives or trading rewards. This suggests early demand from active users rather than incentive-driven participation.
The funding comes as prediction markets have become one of the fastest-growing segments across both crypto and fintech. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi have experienced booming trading volumes particularly during FIFA times. Kalshi has infact unveiled AI agent to power the FIFA driven trading.
In explaining its investment thesis, USV partner Nikhil Basu Trivedi argued that prediction markets remain in their infancy despite the rapid rise of platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. He believes the sector is approaching the same inflection point crypto exchanges once experienced.
According to Trivedi, history shows that early leaders rarely dominate market infrastructure forever. Instead, later entrants often gain significant market share by building better products for underserved users.
Drawing comparisons with crypto’s biggest exchange shakeups, he pointed to how Binance challenged Coinbase, Hyperliquid overtook dYdX in perpetual futures. Blur disrupted OpenSea in NFTs, and Morpho emerged as a major alternative to Aave in decentralized lending.
“One common theme in these examples has been focusing on a key underserved user segment,” Trivedi wrote while announcing USV’s investment.
For prediction markets, USV believes that underserved segment is professional traders.
Sneha Agrawal
GUIDE
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