18% — Which company has the second best AI model end of April
Kalshi 18% · 7 contracts · $3K volume · medium confidence
Updated 2026-06-29 02:45:32 UTC

Why this matters:
This probability reflects market expectations that a company other than the leader will hold the second-best AI model by end of April 2026. The 25% aggregate probability suggests traders view this outcome as unlikely but plausible. Two main factors drive the current level: the concentration of recent AI breakthroughs among a few dominant players, which makes it difficult for a second-place competitor to emerge, and uncertainty about which capability dimension matters most for ranking models—coding performance, reasoning, multimodal abilities, or general instruction-following. The outcome depends heavily on how model benchmarks are evaluated in late April, particularly whether official leaderboards and third-party evaluations show a clear separation between first and second place, or whether technical performance remains contested across different domains.

Key factors:
- Benchmark methodology: Whether end-of-April evaluations prioritize coding benchmarks (favoring Anthropic per Kalshi data) versus general reasoning tasks affects which company places second
- Polymarket-Kalshi divergence of 7 percentage points suggests material disagreement on likelihood; Polymarket traders price it higher, possibly reflecting greater uncertainty about what 'best model' means
- Recent contract data shows heavy Anthropic positioning across multiple timeframes (June style control at 67¢, December coding at 59¢), indicating concentrated market belief in their competitive position
- The 20% Kalshi average versus 27% Polymarket average may reflect different trader bases with different definitions of model quality or different confidence in April timeline data
- Top trading volume concentrates on 'which company has best' contracts, not second-best, suggesting secondary rankings receive less liquidity and sharper opinion divergence

Contracts:
- Which AI company will have the best coding model on Dec 31, 2026?: Anthropic — 56¢ Kalshi $2K (weight 82%)
- Which AI company will have the best coding model on Dec 31, 2026?: OpenAI — 32¢ Kalshi $211 (weight 8%)
- Which AI company will have the best coding model on Dec 31, 2026?: Google — 3¢ Kalshi $209 (weight 8%)
- Which company will release a Fully AI-generated multi-episode scripted series to the public?: Amazon — 10¢ Kalshi $22 (weight 1%)
- Which company will release a Fully AI-generated multi-episode scripted series to the public?: Disney — 10¢ Kalshi $9 (weight 0%)
- Which company will release a Fully AI-generated multi-episode scripted series to the public?: Netflix — 8¢ Kalshi $0 (weight 0%)
- Which AI company will have the best coding model on Dec 31, 2026?: xAI — 4¢ Kalshi $0 (weight 0%)

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## Methodology

SimpleFunctions aggregates live YES-side prices from Kalshi and Polymarket contracts bound to this question. For binary topics the headline is the liquidity-weighted mid-price (weight = log(1 + 24h volume) × freshness, where freshness is 1.0 if updated <24h, 0.7 if <7d, 0.4 otherwise). For multi-outcome (winner-take-all) topics the headline is the current leader's price — disjoint outcomes are never arithmetically averaged. Snapshots refresh every 5 minutes during market hours.

## SF Signal

- SF Index, regime, and 30d Brier calibration are computed separately and surfaced at https://simplefunctions.dev/admin/calibration.
- No SimpleFunctions index / regime / calibration signal is bound to this topic yet — the headline above is market-derived only.

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*Last verified: 2026-06-29T02:20:49.120Z*

By SimpleFunctions — https://simplefunctions.dev/

Cite as: "18% per prediction markets (SimpleFunctions, June 2026)"
Canonical: https://simplefunctions.dev/answer/which-company-has-second-best-ai-model-april
Full data: https://simplefunctions.dev/api/public/query?q=Which%20company%20has%20the%20second%20best%20AI%20model%20end%20of%20April
Provider: SimpleFunctions — https://simplefunctions.dev