Polymarket Hires 30-Year Goldman Sachs Veteran to Target Wall Street Liquidity

Polymarket, the decentralized prediction-market platform, has hired a longtime Goldman Sachs executive as it steps up efforts to attract institutional investors.

CNBC reported on September 29 that Polymarket had appointed Lisa Mantil as head of institutional growth. Mantil spent about 30 years at Goldman Sachs and most recently was a partner and global head of the firm’s ETF Accelerator.

She will lead Polymarket’s institutional business, aiming to expand participation from Wall Street financial firms and large investors while positioning prediction markets as tools for investing and risk management.

“Lisa’s experience and network in institutional financial markets are world-class,” Polymarket Chief Executive Officer Shayne Coplan said. He added that she is the right person to lead the company’s institutional expansion.

The prediction-market industry has recently begun pursuing institutional liquidity after trading volumes surged on the back of retail investor activity. Rival Kalshi in April became the first prediction-market platform to carry out a block trade, in which a large transaction is negotiated directly between counterparties. Polymarket’s offshore platform completed its first block trade a month later.

Polymarket officially launched its U.S. exchange in May and is also preparing to introduce large-scale trading functionality for institutional clients on the U.S. platform, CNBC reported.