Polymarket has cut jobs and ended contractor agreements in a reorganisation, the company confirmed to Reuters on 11 November 2026. An internal email circulating on X since last week, which Polymarket says is genuine, told contractors their agreements would end “as part of a company-wide reduction in force”, effective 4 November. Polymarket has not said how many people were affected.
What is confirmed
A Polymarket spokesperson told Fox Business the company had reorganised for “its next phase of growth, which has meant a lot of new hires, changes in personnel and letting some people go”. It called reports that 30% of staff were cut inaccurate but gave no figure of its own. According to unnamed sources, more than half of those affected were contractors, mostly in marketing, customer experience and engineering. CoinDesk, citing Bloomberg, says investors had pressed founder Shayne Coplan to run a tighter business. The cuts follow new hires at the top: Warren Jenson, formerly Amazon’s finance chief, became Polymarket’s first CFO in September.
Our numbers: Kalshi pulled away
We pulled monthly volume for both exchanges from DeFiLlama (Polymarket, all its venues, and Kalshi) on 12 November. In January 2026 the race was close: Kalshi did 51.3% of the two exchanges’ combined volume. It stayed near 51% to 54% until April, then climbed to 61% in June and 74% in August. In October Kalshi did $16.62 billion against Polymarket’s $6.04 billion, a 73.3% share. Polymarket’s volume grew too, from $3.53 billion in January, just far more slowly than Kalshi’s, which rose from $3.72 billion. By the same data Kalshi first passed Polymarket in September 2025.
These are DeFiLlama’s figures. Company-reported numbers use other measures: Polymarket said its US exchange alone did more than $14.5 billion of notional volume in October, as we covered in our revenue run-rate post, so the absolute amounts are not comparable across sources. The trend in the share is what counts here.
Key facts
Who: Polymarket (international onchain venue and Polymarket US).
What: layoffs plus ended contractor agreements, effective 4 November 2026; confirmed 11 November.
How many: not disclosed; company disputes a 30% figure.
Volume, October 2026 (DeFiLlama): Kalshi $16.62bn, Polymarket $6.04bn; Kalshi share 73.3% (January 51.3%).
Why it matters for GambleFi
Polymarket is the biggest prediction market that settles onchain, so its fortunes say a lot about whether crypto-native betting can keep up with a CFTC-regulated rival. Kalshi’s lead is built largely on sports, as our volume-by-category comparison showed, while Polymarket has been pushing its own US venue. Kalshi has its own trouble, with a CFTC probe into how it filed weather contracts, so the gap is not settled. For onchain betting exchanges such as SX Bet, the takeaway is that volume is following licences and distribution, not the blockchain. This is a news summary, not financial advice; see the GambleFi FAQ for the basics.