The archive · Money & Fintech · Strategic decision · 2025–2026
Dome's unified prediction-market API: YC F25 to Polymarket's second acquisition
Two Alchemy founding engineers bet developers want one API for all prediction markets; Polymarket bought them months after YC F25
Dome
What the business is
Unified prediction market API: enables developers to access market data and order placement across multiple platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi through a single interface.
Starting capital：$500K(YC)+ $4.7M seed
How it started
Former Alchemy founding engineers Kunal Roy and Kurush Dubash founded Dome, targeting 'multi-platform prediction markets need a unified API'; selected for the YC Fall 2025 batch and received $500K.
What happened
Completed a $4.7M seed round; product positioned as developer infrastructure: applications, trading bots, and data dashboards can connect to multiple prediction markets simultaneously through Dome; Polymarket was valued at about $9B at the time.
How it ended up
In 2026-02, it was acquired by Polymarket (amount not disclosed), becoming Polymarket's second formal acquisition; Dome was merged into its developer infrastructure direction.
Background
Dome is a company building developer infrastructure for prediction markets: it unifies market data, orders, and tools from multiple platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi into one API, allowing developers to serve multiple markets at once after a single integration. Founders Kunal Roy and Kurush Dubash were both founding engineers at Alchemy; in 2025 they were selected for the YC Fall batch, first received $500K, and then completed a $4.7M seed round.
Before the acquisition, Polymarket was already the largest player in prediction markets, with a valuation of about $9B, but it had hardly made any acquisitions; its first formal acquisition was buying the U.S.-licensed derivatives exchange QCEX in 2025, using it to return to the U.S. market. In February 2026, Polymarket announced the acquisition of Dome, with the amount not disclosed, as its second formal acquisition, using it to strengthen developer infrastructure.
The value of this deal was not in Dome's revenue, but in the 'entry point': when developers build cross-platform applications, trading bots, and data dashboards, the first thing they connect to is a unified layer like Dome. By buying this channel, Polymarket effectively secured an early position on the developer entry point of the prediction market ecosystem.
What has to be true
- The two founders were founding engineers at Alchemy and had direct experience with 'what infrastructure developers need'.
- Prediction markets are moving from a single platform to multiple platforms (Kalshi, Polymarket, and others); the middleware position for a unified API genuinely exists.
- The seed round was only about $5.2M; valuation and scale were small, so the acquisition cost was negligible for Polymarket, but the strategic positioning value was high.
- The product is a pure developer tool, does not handle order funds, has low red-line risk, and is easy for the buyer to integrate directly into its own infrastructure.
What can be applied
For infrastructure firms betting on multi-platform ecosystems, the best buyer is the largest platform, buying the developer entry point, not revenue.
Aftermath
As of 2026-09-01, Dome has been merged into Polymarket; the team and unified API are being used to strengthen Polymarket's developer infrastructure; the acquisition amount has not been disclosed, and whether the product operates independently has not been publicly stated. Polymarket continues to expand at a valuation of about $9B and has successively signed distribution partnerships with MLS, NHL, Substack, and others.
Sources
- Polymarket buys fresh prediction market API startup Dome, marking second official acquisition
- Polymarket acquires prediction market API startup Dome
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