Small businesses have always faced the same risks as big corporations: bad weather tanks foot traffic, surprise tariffs crush margins, an election reshuffles the regulatory landscape. The difference is that Goldman Sachs has a derivatives desk for that. Your local coffee shop does not.
Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated prediction market exchange, is trying to close that gap with a new AI-powered tool called Blanket. Developed in partnership with London-based financial economist Lauris Zminsky, the tool went live publicly this week after a quiet stealth period at tryblanket.app. Its pitch is straightforward: tell the AI about your business, and it will identify your risk exposures and recommend specific event contracts on Kalshi’s marketplace that could offset them.
What Blanket actually does
Blanket operates as a recommendation layer, not a trading platform. It doesn’t execute orders or handle any funds. Instead, it functions like a risk consultant that speaks in prediction-market contracts rather than hourly billing rates.
A restaurant owner worried about a brutal winter hurting weekend revenue could use Blanket to surface weather-related contracts on Kalshi. A manufacturer exposed to energy price spikes might find contracts tied to natural gas benchmarks. The AI does the diagnostic work, then points users to the relevant markets where they can place their own hedges.
