ICE posts record earnings, doubles on Polymarket data and 24/7 Onchain markets

Intercontinental Exchange, the company behind the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), reported its strongest quarter in company history on April 30. But buried in the prepared remarks was something more interesting than the record numbers: ICE founder, chairman and CEO Jeff Sprecher positioned forecast market data alongside other key macro indicators essential to managing risk.

“New technologies such as tokenization and prediction markets are attracting increasing attention,” Sprecher said on the Q1 2026 earnings call. “We approach these developments from first principles. How is risk managed? How does settlement work? Where does trusted data come from? And how do participants get regulated access? Those questions matter regardless of the form risk transfer takes, and they are questions ICE has spent decades learning how to answer.”

ICE’s investment in and partnership with Polymarket goes beyond data to support the company’s push into 24/7 trading of tokenized securities and instant onchain settlement, announced in January. In February 2026, ICE launched the Polymarket Signals and Sentiment tool, which provides normalized, structured forecast market data feeds delivered exclusively through ICE’s institutional data network. Sprecher also confirmed during the earnings call that “Polymarket’s engineering team is working with us on on-chain settlement and 24/7 capital movement,” a reference to ICE’s broader push into tokenized securities.

The company is building its Polymarket play from a position of financial strength. NYSE: ICE had record net income of $3.0 billion (up 18% year-over-year), record adjusted earnings per share of $2.35 (up 37%) and record adjusted operating income of $1.9 billion (up 26%) in Q1 2026. The company also repurchased $848 million to shareholders in the quarter, including $551 million.

ICE’s goal, as confirmed by Q1 earnings comments, is to build the regulated infrastructure layer for a financial system moving to 24/7, onchain operation and settlement, and to be the source of reliable data on which the system runs.

Polymarket supports ICE data signals and blockchain push

ICE first announced a strategic investment in Polymarket in October 2025, committing up to $2 billion at an approximately $8 billion pre-money valuation. In March, it closed a follow-on investment of $600 million, bringing its total commitment to about $1.6 billion. ICE’s core thesis is that it is primarily a data play to strengthen their existing business.

Institutional traders have always had ways of pricing what has already happened. What they’ve never had is a clean, structured, continuous update of what sophisticated crowds collectively believe will happen, about elections, central bank decisions, geopolitical events, and more. This is what Polymarket provides. ICE takes that raw signal, normalizes it against its existing financial data infrastructure, and delivers it through the same pipes that carry security prices and corporate actions.

On the earnings call, president Ben Jackson mentioned the product directly in his prepared remarks: “During the quarter, we launched our Polymarket Signals and Sentiment product, which normalized forecast market data for institutional workflows and is available exclusively through ICE feeds. We also include additional correlated datasets, including Reddit and Dow Jones content to provide broader context and information about market flows.”

When asked directly by Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Bedell about what is driving FIDS (Fixed Income and Data Services) recurring revenue growth, which has climbed from 5% to 9% year-on-year over the past five quarters, FIDS President Chris Edmonds pointed to Polymarket as an example of the demand expansion and seamless integration: “Our ability to deliver that is not in any way dependent on the operations of our clients. activity.” In other words, ICE was able to integrate Polymarket data into workflows that customers already use.

Jackson also mentioned a second, forward-looking value stream beyond data integration, with Sprecher confirming Polymarket’s blockchain-native engineering capabilities as part of their own build toward blockchain-based trade and settlement.

ICE building to tokenization, 24/7 trading and settlement

Polymarket is one key part of what Sprecher outlined on the call as ICE’s broader digital markets architecture. The flagship initiative is a tokenized securities platform being built at the New York Stock Exchange. The idea is to combine the NYSE’s existing high-velocity matching engine, the technology that already handles billions of transactions a day, with blockchain-based distribution and settlement, enabling 24/7 trading.

Sprecher was specific that it does not require any new legislation: “We are seeking regulatory approval under existing federal law and this initiative is not dependent on any pending legislation.” ICE has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Securitize, naming them as the first digital transfer agent to support tokenized security issuance and lifecycle management on the platform.

The biggest benefit of tokenization, Sprecher said in his Q&A answer to Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys, is essentially changing how money moves. “The biggest benefit of tokenization is going to be a rewiring of the movement of money and value and essentially allowing it to happen on the internet, as opposed to the conventional bank wires.”

Instead of transfers going through traditional banking systems, which operate on business hours, take days to complete and require layers of intermediaries, value moves over the Internet, almost instantly, more like an email. He pointed to stock markets as a simple analogy: a few years ago, when the US stock market shortened the time it takes to finalize a trade from two business days to one, trading volumes soared.

“And all of this means to us that there will be more volume of trade and transactions. When you make something easier, people do more of it,” says Sprecher. He also indicated a hybrid model of Sprecher’s that bridges conventional infrastructure with an onchain settlement and ownership transfer layer:

“I suspect that we will become a validator in the chain and similarly have that business … Right now our model is to connect our conventional trading platforms to the chain … matching will still happen on conventional technology, but title transfer and custody and capital movement will move via the Internet through encrypted tokens.”

Polymarket and OKX: Complementary onchain partnerships

Polymarket and OKX are the two partnerships called ICE to strengthen that new onchain architecture from different angles.

OKX is a major global crypto exchange with over 120 million users. Its role in the ICE partnership is essentially a two-way bridge: OKX’s crypto-native user base gets a path into ICE’s regulated markets, including US futures and eventually NYSE token stocks. In return, ICE gets a path to launch regulated crypto futures linked to OKX spot prices. For ICE, this is a customer acquisition channel into a massive audience that currently does not participate in its traditional markets. For OKX users, it’s a regulated ramp to tools they couldn’t easily access before.

Polymarket’s role is different, but complementary. On the data side, it is already live with the Signals and Sentiment product now delivering event probability feeds to institutional clients. On the infrastructure side, Sprecher confirmed a collaboration with Polymarket, which is natively built on blockchain. Its smart contract architecture and on-chain settlement experience are exactly what ICE needs as it builds out of the NYSE tokenized platform.

Sprecher drew these threads together in his prepared remarks: “These initiatives complement our core franchises as our center of gravity remains the technology that supports global risk transfer, price discovery and capital formation.” Just as ICE did in conventional markets, it is now positioning itself to be the regulated infrastructure layer of onchain 24/7 capital markets.

The competitive background: Kalshi volume, Polymarket’s regulatory path

It is worth keeping this strategic alliance in mind when looking at the near-term competitive picture between Polymarket and Kalshi, which tells a more mixed story. Our April volume report shows Kalshi posting a record $14.81 billion in assumed trading volume in April, up 13.3% from March, while Polymarket fell 14.8% to $9.01 billion. The monthly gap of $5.8 billion is the largest it has been. Kalshi’s sports-dominated mix (~85% Sports + Combos) gives it a more resilient floor in a sports-heavy calendar. Polymarket’s greater exposure to crypto and politics means more macro event dependence.

In terms of valuation, as we reported in April, Polymarket is reportedly weighing a new round at around $15 billion, a significant increase from its $9 billion post-money October 2025 level, but behind Kalshi, which has priced back to $22 billion over several quick fundraising rounds led by Paradigm and Coatue. That gap in successive repricing is widening.

But the volume and valuation snapshot doesn’t fully capture where Polymarket is headed. Polymarket is said to be in active discussions with the CFTC about bringing its primary offshore platform back to US users, potentially unifying its global exchange infrastructure with its existing US regulatory licenses. If this happens, it will consolidate liquidity currently split across two separate platforms and dramatically expand Polymarket’s addressable market. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, who is currently the agency’s sole commissioner, has publicly signaled a desire to “bring foreign prediction market liquidity back to the United States under comprehensive regulation,” opening the door. Whether the platform can achieve regulatory fit and get approval from the CFTC is a separate question.

For ICE, Polymarket would be a significant development in moving towards full US regulation. This will align Polymarket more directly with the regulated infrastructure model that ICE is building around it, and make the data and settlement collaboration significantly easier to scale.