Polymarket's first CFO enters office with a tough mandate of catching Kalshi

Polymarket has appointed Warren Jenson, a former chief financial officer of Amazon, as its own CFO.

The veteran operator, whose addition to the Polymarket team was announced on Thursday, September 10, is joining a company that is trying to close a wide volume gap with rival Kalshi.

Jensen will be reporting to the founder and CEO, Shayne Coplan, and will take over capital strategy, long-range planning, and financial infrastructure. 

A finance résumé built for older, bigger companies

Before Polymarket, Jensen was president and CFO at Nielsen and president at LiveRamp. Before those roles, he held the CFO seat at Amazon, Electronic Arts, Delta Air Lines, and NBC. 

Jensen, who holds accounting degrees from Brigham Young University, also sits on the boards of DigitalOcean, Dropbox, and Ripple.

In the announcement, Coplan stated, “We’re assembling the team to match the opportunity in front of us.”

Jenson, for his part, said that “Polymarket created a massive new global market category.” He added that he is joining “the leadership team to put the capital strategy and operating discipline in place to move quickly at scale and continue to push the frontier of this industry.”

Kalshi still owns the volume lead

While the spots for the leading prediction markets in the world are shared between Kalshi and Polymarket, the former still stands out in terms of volume by a significant margin. 

At the close of June, Kalshi saw around $33 billion in volume against Polymarket’s $14.5 billion.

The two combined moved about $47.5 billion that month, which is more than triple the roughly $14 billion a month US sportsbooks averaged in 2025, per Pew Research figures.

Recent activity tells the same story, as DefiLlama data shows prediction markets generated about $4.05 billion in volume over the past seven days. 

Polymarket accounted for roughly $922 million of it and around $4.06 million in revenue. Kalshi did $2.91 billion in volume within the same period. Polymarket is usually cheaper to trade and free for makers, but it has not matched Kalshi’s headline numbers.

Regulation is the terrain Polymarket wants to fight on

Where Polymarket may hold an edge is the courtroom. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated exchange that argues federal derivatives law gives the commission sole jurisdiction, but states disagree. Cryptopolitan has reported that Washington, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, and New York have all moved against the company, with New York’s suit seeking more than $36 billion in damages. 

A Michigan judge ordered Kalshi to pull its sports contracts and threatened a penalty of up to $500,000 a day, as covered in Cryptopolitan’s Michigan report, and New Jersey has asked the Supreme Court to settle who governs these markets.

Polymarket obtained its US foothold by buying the CFTC-licensed QCX, giving it a regulated domestic arm that operates separately from the geo-blocked international platform. 

Building financial systems that can support both, under two very different rulebooks, is exactly the job Jenson has been handed. How this translates into catching Kalshi will be seen in the near future.

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