A year after making one of the most attention-grabbing AI-generated ads of 2025, Kalshi is deliberately moving the other way. The prediction market has swapped the Google Veo-generated characters for 35mm film, worked with Timothee Chalamet and Oscar-winning cinematographers, and begun building an internal creative studio. Its U.S. marketing spend rose from $22,800 in the first quarter of 2025 to $20.4 million in the first quarter of 2026, according to MediaRadar.
The move was not a response to consumer criticism. Kalshi’s marketing leaders said the technology had become less useful as a way for the brand to distinguish itself. “What AI does, it gives other creatives, or even non-creatives, it basically puts everyone at one skill level,” said Jonathan Katav, Kalshi’s creative director. “Everyone can achieve the same result. What you’re left with is your creativity, your brain, your ability to collaborate with groundbreaking creatives.” Keaton Inglis, Kalshi’s head of growth, said he had “transitioned us, going from being a leader in AI to as human as possible going forward.”
Since March, Kalshi has worked with Chalamet, J Balvin, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Lionel Messi. It struck a sponsorship deal with New York’s Penn Station and plastered it with posters evoking the real-time markets, and ran a US Open campaign focused on match attendees rather than the tennis stars. The “Subs” commercial, released in August and built around the world’s longest sandwich, was made with MJZ’s Tom Kuntz and Hoyte von Hoytema, who worked on Christopher Nolan films. “It’s very strange. It’s very weird,” Inglis said.
The marketing operation is much larger than it was a year ago. Katav joined in March as Kalshi’s first creative director, and close to 30 marketers now work across its design and growth teams. Katav’s design team has eight people and is establishing a studio inside the company. He said the fear of not moving as fast as before is “actually not true,” and that “with enough planning and structure, you could actually move significantly fast. And I think you just foresee the upcoming events, because we are a prediction market, and act on them.”
Among the first resources Katav brought in were not AI subscriptions but hundreds of art books, to get the team inspired and “look less at the screen and more at their books.”
Read more at Ad Age.