Inside The Deal That Made Polymarket’s Founder One Of The Youngest Billionaires On Earth

From FBI Raid To Billionaire Status

One year ago, the FBI raided Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan’s apartment. Now, the college dropout is a billionaire at age 27.

In July, Jeffrey Sprecher, the 70-year-old billionaire CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, sat at Manhatta, an upscale restaurant in the financial district overlooking the sprawling New York City skyline from the 60th floor. As a sommelier weaved through tables pouring wine, in walked Shayne Coplan—in a T-shirt and jeans, clutching a plastic water bottle and a paper bag with a bagel he’d picked up en route. Sprecher chuckles as he recalls his first impression of the boyish, eccentric entrepreneur: “An old bald guy that works at the New York Stock Exchange, where we require that you wear a suit and tie, next to a mop-headed guy in a T-shirt that's 27.” But Sprecher was fascinated by Polymarket, Coplan’s blockchain-based prediction market, and after dinner, he made his move: “I asked Shayne if he would consider selling us his company.”

How Polymarket’s Prediction Markets Work

Prediction markets like Polymarket let thousands of ordinary people bet on future events—the unemployment rate, say, or when BitCoin will hit an all-time high. In aggregate, prediction market bets have proven to be something of a crystal ball with the wisdom of the crowd often proving itself more prescient than expert opinion. For instance, Polymarket punters predicted that Trump would prevail in the 2024 presidential election, when many national pundits were sure that Kamala Harris would win.

Coplan initially turned down Sprecher’s buyout offer. But discussions led to negotiations and eventually a deal. In October, Intercontinental announced it had invested $2 billion for an up to 25% stake in the company, bringing the young solo founder the balance he was looking for. “We're consumer, we’re viral, we're culture. They’re finance, they’re headless and they’re infrastructure,” says Coplan in a recent interview.

At the same time, Coplan announced investments from other billionaires including Figma’s Dylan Field, Zynga’s Mark Pincus, Uber’s Travis Kalanick and hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin. A longtime Red Hot Chili Peppers fan, Coplan even convinced lead singer Anthony Kiedis to invest after a mutual acquaintance brought the musician to Coplan’s apartment one day. “He's buzzing my door, and I’m like, ‘holy shit,'” Coplan recalls, his bright blue eyes widening. “I love their music. A lot of the inspiration [for my work] comes from the music that I listen to.”

Thanks to the deals, Polymarket’s valuation quickly shot to $9 billion, making the 2025 Under 30 alum the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, with an estimated 11% stake worth $1 billion. His reign was short: twenty days later, he was overtaken as the youngest by the three 22-year-old founders of AI startup Mercor.

Young entrepreneurs are minting ten-figure fortunes faster than ever. In addition to the Mercor trio and Coplan, 15 other Under 30 alumni—including ScaleAI cofounder Lucy Guo, Reddit’s Steve Huffman and Cursor’s cofounders—became billionaires this year, while Guo’s cofounder Alexandr Wang and Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev (both former Under 30 honorees) regained their billionaire status after having fallen out of the ranks.

Coplan’s Early Obsession With Markets And Tech

The budding billionaire has long been fascinated by markets and tech. When he was just 14, Coplan emailed the regional Securities and Exchange Commission office to ask how to create new marketplaces. “I did not get a response, but it’s a really funny email,” he says, grinning playfully as he thinks of his younger self. “It just shows that this stuff takes over a decade of percolating in your mind.”

Two years later, Coplan showed up at the offices of internet startup Genius uninvited after multiple emails of his asking for an internship went ignored. At age 16—at least a decade younger than anyone in that office—he secured his first job after making a memorable impression with his “wild curls” and “encyclopedic knowledge of billionaire tech entrepreneurs.” “If he chooses to become a tech entrepreneur, which seems likely, I have no doubt that we’ll be seeing his name again in the press before long,” Chris Glazek, his manager at the time, wrote in Coplan’s college recommendation letter.

Coplan went on to study computer science at NYU, but dropped out in 2017 to work on various crypto projects that never took off. In 2020, he founded Polymarket to create a solution to the “rampant misinformation” he saw in the world: The company’s first market allowed users to bet on when New York City would reopen amid the pandemic. He soon expanded into elections and pop culture happenings, among other events.

Regulatory Battles And The FBI Raid

But it didn’t take long for the company to butt heads with regulators. In January 2022, Polymarket paid a $1.4 million fine to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for offering unregistered markets. It was also ordered to block all U.S. users, but activity on Polymarket skyrocketed particularly during last year’s U.S. presidential election, with bets totaling $3.6 billion. A week after the election, the FBI raided Coplan's apartment and seized his devices as part of an investigation into a possible violation of this agreement.

The investigations were dropped in July, and less than a week later, Polymarket announced it had acquired CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange QCX to prepare for a compliant U.S. launch. QCX applied to be a federally-registered exchange in 2022—an application that was left dormant for three years before receiving approval days before the acquisition was announced. When asked about the timing of the deal, Coplan points to CFTC acting chairwoman Caroline Pham, who President Trump tapped to lead the agency in January. “Caroline deserves a lot of credit for getting every single license that had been paused for no reason approved, as acting chairwoman in less than a year,” he says. Coplan had realized an acquisition might be the only way for Polymarket to legally operate in the U.S. as early as 2021 due to the lengthy federal approval process, a source familiar with the deal told Forbes.

Just two months after the acquisition and days after Donald Trump Jr. joined Polymarket’s advisory board, the company got approval to launch in the U.S. (Trump Jr. has also served as a strategic advisor to Polymarket’s main competitor Kalshi since January.)

Critics Warn Of ‘Unregulated Gambling’

Polymarket’s rapid rise has drawn critics. Dennis Kelleher, co-founder and CEO of Washington-based financial advocacy group Better Markets, told Forbes in an email that the current administration’s deregulation around prediction markets has unlocked a regulatory “loophole” to enable “unregulated gambling” under the CFTC, “which has zero expertise, capacity or resources to regulate and police these markets.” Kelleher added that with backing from the Trump family “who are directly trying to profit on this new gambling den… the massive deregulation and crypto hysteria will almost certainly end badly for the American people.”

“If you just look at a photo of Shayne and I standing next to each other, the visual itself tells a story of American innovation,” Sprecher says.

Deregulation Spurs A Prediction Market Gold Rush

Investors and businesses are scrambling to seize the moment of deregulation. “We had opportunities to invest in events markets earlier, but there was a lot of risk,” Sprecher says, listing the regulatory changes in favor of crypto and prediction markets under the Trump administration. “This was the moment to invest if we wanted to still be early in the space.”

In the last few months, Trump’s Truth Social and sportsbook FanDuel, as well as cryptocurrency exchanges Crypto.com, Coinbase and Gemini all announced their own plans to offer prediction markets. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said prediction markets, which were integrated into the Robinhood platform in March, were helping drive record activity for the retail brokerage in its third quarter earnings call.

“People are starting to realize right now that the opportunities are endless,” says Dubin, the billionaire hedge fund veteran who invested in Polymarket earlier this year. He points to sports betting companies, which have been regulated by states as gambling activity and taxed accordingly. States like New York can tax up to 51% of sportsbooks’ revenue, but federally-regulated prediction markets can bypass state laws, avoiding taxes and operating in all 50 states. With the realization that prediction markets could upend the sports betting industry—which brought in $13.7 billion in revenue in 2024—businesses are moving quickly. In October, both Polymarket and Kalshi secured partnerships with sportsbook PrizePicks and the National Hockey League, and Polymarket announced exclusive partnerships with sportsbook DraftKings and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Beyond Sports Betting: Data, Tokens And Wall Street

The disruption won’t be limited to sports betting. Alongside its investment, Intercontinental’s tens of thousands of institutional clients including large hedge funds and over 750 third-party providers of data will soon have access to Polymarket data, as it gets integrated into Intercontinental’s products such as indices to better inform investment decisions. It also hopes to work with Polymarket to work on initiatives around tokenization—or converting financial assets into digital tokens on blockchain technology—to allow traders on Intercontinental’s exchanges to trade more flexibly at all hours of the day, Sprecher says. What’s more, in November, Google Finance announced it would integrate Polymarket and Kalshi data into its search results, while Yahoo Finance also announced an exclusive partnership with Polymarket.

Despite flashy investors, partnerships and a record $2.4 billion in trading volume in November, Polymarket has yet to launch in the U.S. or turn a profit. Coplan and his investors have hinted at ways the company could make money one day—selling data, trading fees, a cryptocurrency token launch (similar to Ethereum or Bitcoin)—but decline to confirm any specifics. For now, the only thing that’s certain is the bet Coplan is making on himself. “Going for it and having it not pan out is an infinitely better outcome than living your life as a what if,” he says.

‘Against All Odds’

Standing across from the New York Stock Exchange building, Coplan tilts his head up as he watches a massive banner with Polymarket’s logo get hoisted onto the exterior of the building. It’s been five years since founding. One year since the FBI raid. He’s taking it all in. “Against all odds,” the bright blue banner reads, rippling in the wind alongside three American flags protruding from the building.