Brokerage firm Public is launching a prediction markets offering for customers that enables them to effectively bet on the outcome of events. Plus, it is giving customers the ability to use artificial intelligence agents to make those bets on their behalf as well as make other kinds of trades based on insights gleaned from prediction markets data.

Prediction markets have recently soared in popularity, and brokerage firms such as Robinhood Markets have begun generating substantial revenue from customers trading event contracts via prediction markets offerings. The event contracts are binary yes/no contracts that allow customers to speculate on outcomes of coming events, such as whether the Federal Reserve will raise its benchmark rate or whether the New England Patriots will win their next football game. Most trading volume in prediction markets is in sports-related contracts.

Public says its offering will "focus on events that move the markets." Event categories available include crypto, commodities, climate, economics, corporate events, markets, indexes, science, and politics. The company says each category gives investors a way to assess potential risks and opportunities relevant to their portfolios. It isn't offering sports or culture-related events. It costs customers two pennies to trade event contracts.

Customers can buy and sell event contracts themselves or have AI agents do it on their behalf. Public says that AI agents can use prediction market data as a signal for a stock or bond trade. The company provides this example of what an AI agent may do: monitor rate expectations via prediction markets and if the probability of at least three rate cuts this year rises by 10 percentage points in a single day, alert the customer and summarize his or her exposure to bank stocks.

"Public is built for investors who take an active hand in constructing their portfolios, and our AI agents let them automate those strategies," said Leif Abraham, co-CEO and co-founder of Public. "Prediction markets give those agents a new input: real-world events. Members can take a position on the event directly, or use the market's data as the signal that triggers a trade anywhere else in their portfolio."

In March, Public began allowing customers to use AI to monitor the markets and execute trades on their behalf. Public launched in 2019 and it is based in New York.

To power its prediction markets offering, Public says it has joined with Kalshi, the world's largest prediction market and a CFTC-regulated financial exchange. Both Public and Kalshi are private companies.