A group of former Wall Street quants has raised $8.5 million to launch River Markets, which the company describes as the first institutional-grade execution and prime brokerage platform built specifically for prediction markets. Haun Ventures led the investment round, with Coinbase Ventures and Y Combinator also participating. Other backers include Qube Research & Technologies and individuals from Citadel, JPMorgan and Google. Fighting the Fragmentation Issue The prediction markets industry remains fragmented, with liquidity spread across multiple platforms and traders often switching between interfaces to manage positions on the same event. This complicates risk management and makes hedging less efficient as traders lack a consolidated view of positions across venues. River Markets aims to address that fragmentation through a single platform combining multiple data feeds, risk-management tools and execution algorithms.The company plans to operate as an execution layer across prediction-market venues, offering smart order routing, a dashboard with consolidated positions across Kalshi, Polymarket and Novig, and built-in risk controls. "This transition from mainstream retail to institutional can't really be achieved with today's consumer interfaces," said Oscar Levy, River's CEO and a former VP of Quantitative Strategy at BlackRock. "Somebody needs to make these accessible and familiar for existing institutions."River was founded by Levy and CTO Antonin Perrot. Levy previously worked in quantitative strategy at BlackRock, while Perrot worked in electronic trading at Morgan Stanley and high-frequency trading at Valkyrie Trading. The pair began building trading software for Kalshi and Polymarket in 2023 before developing the tools into an institutional product.A Cross-Venue Execution Layer Other technology providers address different parts of the fragmented prediction-market ecosystem. Tatum, FinFeedAPI and Codex focus largely on data access and API standardisation, while Devexperts, Shift and Leverate provide infrastructure that allows brokers to offer prediction-market products using data aggregated from supported sources. River is targeting a different and still relatively undeveloped segment: prime brokerage and cross-venue execution for professional trading firms. Its smart order routing would allow clients to compare available liquidity and split orders across platforms, while the consolidated interface would provide a single view of positions and P&L. The model is familiar from more established electronic markets, where institutional traders use execution systems to access liquidity across multiple venues without managing each connection separately. What the Funding Supports The $8.5 million round gives River capital to develop its execution and prime brokerage infrastructure across prediction-market venues with separate liquidity pools and trading systems. River would sit between professional clients and prediction-market exchanges, providing routing, portfolio monitoring and risk tools through a single connection. Its commercial case will depend on whether professional trading activity across multiple venues becomes large enough to support a dedicated execution and prime brokerage layer. River is targeting annualised trading volume in the hundreds of millions by year-end. Reaching that target would provide an early indication of demand for consolidated execution tools among professional firms trading across multiple prediction-market venues.This article was written by Tanya Chepkova at www.financemagnates.com.