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ZenSports founder launches “AI-first” hedge fund to trade sports betting, crypto, prediction markets
The news: Mark Thomas, co-founder and former CEO of the mobile OSB and finance app ZenSports, has launched Badass Capital, an AI-first hedge fund targeting sports betting, TradFi and crypto trading, and prediction markets. The fund operates as BA Capital Fund I LP, is majority-funded by Thomas’s own capital, and is accepting a limited outside raise from accredited and qualified non-U.S. investors.
Zoom in: Thomas’s background spans ZenSports, a stint as CEO of KeyStar (the company that acquired ZenSports last year), Big Wheel Casino, and co-founding VIP Play, plus years of personal sports betting analytics and high-volume crypto trading. He says he spent the past few months learning to code and turning that hands-on experience into AI tools that find and act on opportunities systematically in an X post. The fund’s thesis is that AI agents can now plug into sportsbooks, crypto platforms, and prediction markets simultaneously and execute on pricing inefficiencies faster than any human team.
Why it matters: Liquidity across sports betting, crypto, and prediction markets is accelerating, new platforms keep launching and creating fresh pricing inefficiencies, and AI tooling has finally caught up to the point where a small team can move across all of them at once. Whether a founder-funded, AI-first fund can actually systematize that edge is the open question, but the macro conditions Thomas is pointing to feel real.
SBC reveals the five startups heading to First Pitch next month
The news: SBC has announced the five finalists for the 2026 First Pitch competition taking place June 11 at SBC Summit Americas in Fort Lauderdale, co-organized with BettingStartups. The annual startup pitch competition gives early-stage gaming and sports betting companies a live stage in front of investors and industry judges, with the winner taking home a prize package valued at over $100,000.
Why it matters: The last edition of First Pitch, hosted at SBC Summit Lisbon in September, was won by AIstats, a Polish soccer analytics startup that beat out a field covering affiliate tech, messaging-based betting, onchain prediction markets, and a Japanese social sports platform. Compare that to this year’s Americas field, which is almost entirely focused on data, market efficiency, and operator tooling. The Americas ecosystem skews B2B, and the startups that made this cut are pitching squarely at operators looking to move faster and price smarter.
SBC Summit Americas is headed to sunny Fort Lauderdale, Florida next month from June 9–11. With 10,000 industry attendees, a dedicated Startup Zone, and the highly anticipated First Pitch competition, the conference is buzzing with opportunities for startups, early-stage companies, and founders alike.
Get a 30% discount when you use code BETTINGSTARTUPSVIP at checkout here.
Payments are messy for operators, and Soap Payments wants to clean it up
The news: Soap Payments, a platform that routes and manages payments across processors specifically for real-money gaming operators, has raised funding from Antler, AeroPay, and Astralis Capital. Co-founded by Filip Michalsky, Sam Edelstein, and Tyler Carlin, Soap launched in May 2025 and has since signed 30-plus customers across sweepstakes, DFS, and skill gaming.
Zoom in: Soap sits above payment processors, handling KYC, 3DS, geolocation, chargeback protection, and transaction routing in one place. The company has also added stablecoin rails alongside fiat, with near-instant settlement on the roadmap. Michalsky says the technology can enable a card swipe to turn into operator funds in around five seconds.
Why it matters: Payments remain one of the highest-friction areas for early-stage gaming operators—Stripe won’t touch them, and building a compliant stack from scratch means stitching together multiple vendors before taking a single bet. Soap is betting that consolidation and AI-assisted onboarding can compress that timeline enough to become the default layer operators build on. A seed round is planned for later this year to move upmarket and expand internationally.
News, money, and alpha 🗞️
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Big opportunities with awesome growth-stage companies, brought to you by BettingJobs.
🆕 MyPrize is hiring a Partnerships Manager, Creator & Content to manage its live-streaming creator portfolio, game provider relationships, and strategic content partnerships across its free-to-play social gaming platform. Remote-first (NYC/Miami). (View job)
XO Sports is hiring a Mobile Developer to build out its AI-powered sports analytics platform. Melbourne/Manila (hybrid). (View job)
ALT Sports Data is hiring a Vice President of Finance to build and lead the company’s financial engine from its Toronto office. (View job)
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