Prediction Market Infrastructure Firm Furnace Raises $3.5M Seed Round

Furnace, an infrastructure provider for institutional prediction markets, has emerged from stealth following a $3.5 million seed funding round.

The company’s target audience includes institutional investors engaging with prediction markets—such as hedge funds, prime brokers, and proprietary trading desks—as well as developers building applications on top of market platforms.

“Furnace is the reference layer for prediction markets,” the company stated in its launch materials. “We give economic exposures persistent canonical identities and map venue-specific contracts to them, providing the common reference infrastructure institutions and builders need to integrate prediction markets into their systems and products.”

Furnace notes that its covered venues include the U.S. and international versions of Polymarket as well as another major prediction market operator. The company is in the process of adding more venues.

Institutional Expansion and Market Demand

Furnace’s launch coincides with a broader push across the prediction market sector to attract institutional participants, aiming to expand utility beyond retail-heavy event and sports derivatives.

Furnace is supported by some well-known investors. Its website lists North Island Ventures, Reciprocal Ventures, Reverie and VanEck as financial backers while noting its angel investors are Commonweal, DTCC and Public.com.

Resolving Contract Fragmentation

Furnace addresses a key operational friction point in event contract trading: fragmented contract terms and settlement definitions across competing exchanges. By assigning canonical identities to underlying economic exposures, the platform normalizes data feeds for institutional risk systems.

“Each economic exposure receives a persistent canonical identity, with venue-specific instruments and identifiers mapped underneath,” according to the company.

For example, Prediction Market A may offer an event contract on the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates before the end of 2026 while Venue B has a market on the Fed lowering rates by the end of a given month and Prediction Market C has an event contract on rates being lowered but not within a given timeframe.

Furnace technology determines which contracts are essentially the same and which ones are markedly different, with “each venue instrument stays distinct, with its own terms and resolution details.” The technology is deliverable through integration or APIs.