Kalshi and Polymarket Are Offering New Yorkers Free Groceries

New Yorkers saw a glimpse of free groceries recently, and no, not thanks to Mayor Mamdani. It’s those damn prediction markets.

Both Kalshi and Polymarket ran “free grocery” events. And let me tell you, it’s hard to dislike gambling platforms when they’re putting food on your table.

Kalshi went first, covering up to $50 in groceries per shopper at Westside Market in the East Village on Tuesday. Business Insider reported long lines. I wonder if they were longer than the lines at the expensive grocery store Meadow Lane on their opening weekend.

Then, Polymarket announced a full pop-up they’re calling “New York’s first free grocery store,” opening Feb. 12 and running through Feb. 15. They also signed a lease for the space and donated $1 million to Food Bank for New York City, which confirmed the donation.

(Pleaseeee, someone give me a tip on who came up with this and if Polymarket had this planned all along!!)

On Feb. 2 (yesterday), New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a consumer alert warning New Yorkers about the risks of prediction markets, platforms that offer bets disguised as “event contracts” on everything from elections to sporting events. I know this was aimed at the Super Bowl, but you can’t tell me the timing wasn’t on the nose.

Neither Kalshi or Polymarket said the grocery events were coordinated with City Hall, but the framing mirrors Mamdani’s campaign proposal to open publicly owned grocery stores across all five boroughs to lower food prices. Mamdani doesn’t actually have direct authority over prediction market regulation (that sits at the state and federal level) but his affordability messaging has become a central part of NYC’s political conversation.

However, New York state lawmakers are advancing proposals that would directly affect both platforms. One bill, referred to as the ORACLE Act, would restrict certain prediction contracts for New York residents. Separate legislation would require prediction market operators to get state licenses.

Some other context that might be helpful: Donald Trump Jr. has deeply entrenched himself in the prediction market industry, acting as a strategic advisor to Kalshi and an advisor/investor in Polymarket.

Call it whatever you want: charity, marketing, coincidence, politics, kissing up to New Yorkers. Either way, these are politically motivated, free groceries entering the prediction market race, and I never thought I’d write that.

Tech News

Domm Holland Updates

• Domm Holland (teaaa omg) has a startup called Stickier, which, according to Twitter, enables you to “Buy, sell and short stickers. Trade on real hype.” Idk man. (Twitter)

• Background: Domm Holland was a huge name on Twitter after the… fast… failure of his company, Fast. It was a heavily funded one-click payments startup that scaled quickly, hired aggressively, and burned cash with limited revenue. Former employees and critics accused leadership of poor financial discipline and prioritizing hype and founder branding over fundamentals as the market tightened. Fast shut down abruptly in 2022 and was later sold to Affirm, leaving hundreds of employees laid off and cementing Holland’s reputation for high-risk growth followed by messy exits rather than proven execution. What you might not know is that before Fast, Domm already had a reputation in Australia for burning through cash faster than he could acquire it. He grew his earlier startup, Tow.com.au, through government and enterprise contracts, but it failed after unpaid vendors, contract disputes, and legal conflicts arose. It’s a pattern. (NPR)

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• Balint Orosz launched Beautiful Mermaid, an open-source library that renders Mermaid diagrams into SVGs with 15 themes. It hit the top of Hacker News within a day and racked up 715 GitHub stars after people lost it over rendering 100+ diagrams in under 500ms. (Craft)

• Ok so… this is not tech, but… I needed to share. A record potato harvest in Germany created a massive glut, so a farmer offered up 4K tonnes and organizers staged free giveaways across Berlin. They set up 174 distribution points and sent potatoes to residents, soup kitchens, schools, and even zoos. About 3,200 tonnes are still up for grabs. If you’re in Berlin, go get your free potatoes. Repeat after me: Ich bin kein Berliner, ich bin eine Kartoffel. (The Guardian)

College Life

• Students are now using “humanizer” tools to get past AI detectors after schools started flagging submissions and handing out penalties. Researchers tracked 43 humanizer tools that pulled 33.9M website visits in October alone. Turnitin has flagged 150 of them, some charging up to $50. The arms race between writing AI and detecting AI is fully underway. (NBC News)

• Berkeley startup Ditto raised $9.2M in seed funding to expand its dating app to more US campuses. It’s already at 42K users across four UC schools. It uses iMessage and an AI scheduler to set up actual in-person dates. Not a swipe in sight! (Business Insider)

• For the first time in 50 years, US workers with bachelor’s degrees have lost their employment edge over trade workers. BLS data shows the unemployment gap actually flipped in 2025, and it’s been that way for six months now. The timing lines up with rising AI adoption in white-collar roles and a 3% bump in community college enrollment. (The Washington Post)

Company Changes

• Amazon cut about 16K roles across the company, saying it wanted to reduce layers and increase ownership. Most US employees got 90 days to find internal roles, plus severance and outplacement support. (BBC)

• Adobe is killing Adobe Animate on March 1, 2026. Enterprise customers get support through 2029, everyone else through March of next year. Adobe says it’s shifting investment toward AI and that newer platforms better serve users now. End of an era if you grew up on Flash. (Adobe)

Money Moves

• Waymo raised $16B at a ~$126B valuation. They’re using the funds to expand their commercial service and start road testing with a safety driver in 20+ cities this year. (Waymo)

• UBEES raised €8M in a Series A to expand its connected beehive monitoring tech into Latin America and Africa. Yes, beehive monitoring tech. (EU Startups)

• Elon Musk merged SpaceX and xAI into one company valued at $1.25T. The goal is basically to fund both his AI and space ambitions under one roof, which... is a big ass roof. (Bloomberg)

• Nvidia said it’ll invest in OpenAI’s latest funding round. Jensen Huang called it “potentially the largest investment we’ve ever made” and said he “believes in OpenAI.” (Engadget)