Meta develops standalone prediction‑market app “Arena”

Meta Platforms is building a new standalone prediction‑market smartphone app internally codenamed “Arena”. The project, directed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, will operate separately from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger and is intended to compete with existing platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi. In its initial phase the app will use a video‑game‑style points system rather than real‑money wagering, although the company has not ruled out adding monetary betting later.

Arena will draw on Meta’s artificial‑intelligence models, including the Llama language model, to automatically generate prediction questions from trending topics and to automate market resolution. The effort follows Meta’s earlier, short‑lived Forecast app (2020‑2022) and is part of a broader push to find growth avenues as the company’s core social‑media user base – about 3.5 billion daily active users – begins to plateau. Prediction‑market trading volumes have surged to more than $130 billion in 2026, attracting attention from regulators such as the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Meta hopes to leverage its massive audience to drive early adoption while initially avoiding the regulatory complexities of real‑money betting.