Polymarket and Prediction Markets Tap Former DOGE Affiliates for Key Leadership Roles Amid Regulatory Turmoil

Polymarket, the global leader in the prediction market space, faces dozens of ongoing legal battles over its operating model, so nearly every move the company makes is held under close public and regulatory scrutiny. But one high-impact hiring decision has flown largely under the radar: late last year, Polymarket brought on Jonathan Mendelson, a former affiliate of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), as a senior strategic executive.

Before his tenure at Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative, Mendelson worked as an investor at San Francisco-based venture capital firm Accel, which backs emerging and established technology companies. While at DOGE, Mendelson was formally employed by the General Services Administration, but he served as an advisor to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Paul Atkins — a role he held for less than a year.

Polymarket, which is currently the subject of an active investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), declined to comment for this story. The SEC also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Mendelson is far from the only former DOGE affiliate to land a senior leadership position at a major prediction market firm. Elie Mishory, a former CFTC regulator who helped develop the agency’s original regulatory framework for prediction markets, served as Kalshi’s general counsel and chief regulatory officer in 2025 before stepping down to lead DOGE’s work at the SEC, where he collaborated directly with Mendelson. In June 2025, he joined Novig — a newer, well-funded sports-focused prediction market — as chief regulatory and legal affairs officer.

“Elie has been at the center of the most consequential regulatory developments in prediction markets—he helped bring them from a fringe idea to the center of the national conversation,” Jacob Fortinsky, Novig’s cofounder and chief executive, said in a statement announcing Mishory’s hire.

Mishory told WIRED that joining a prediction market company was a “natural dovetail” from the work he led for DOGE at the SEC. During his time at the agency, he prioritized gathering input from career staff to streamline operations, then worked to implement their suggestions to update administrative processes and retire redundant software. He was quick to note that his experience at DOGE was “atypical,” in large part because his work did not focus on cutting staff. (The SEC did see an 18% reduction in staff in 2025; unlike agencies gutted by DOGE cuts such as the United States Agency for International Development, nearly all of the SEC’s reductions came through voluntary buyouts.)

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“My version of DOGE was to find the people who were the experts,” he says. “The people who actually used the software, not just the people who would buy the software, to give them a voice.” In Mishory’s view, this philosophy matches how prediction markets “democratize” knowledge by rewarding people based on the accuracy of their forecasts. He also sees overlap in the risk-tolerant culture of both DOGE and the prediction market industry.

Indeed, DOGE’s model of bringing on young, less experienced engineers to remake the federal government mirrors the leadership structure of many large prediction market companies, including Polymarket and Novig, where top roles are often held by twentysomethings with relatively thin professional resumes.

These hires come at a deeply tumultuous, politically charged moment for the prediction market industry. As the sector has exploded in popularity, dozens of state regulators and federal lawmakers are calling for stricter oversight, arguing that prediction markets facilitate corruption and violate state gambling laws.

In many ways, the industry represents the peak of a strain of startup culture that valorizes speed in a quest to remake long-standing institutions, even as regulators struggle to keep pace with its growth. While many critics argue prediction markets’ offerings are simply sports betting products in disguise, the sector’s leaders aim to compete with the world’s largest commodities and futures markets. They have already secured powerful allies within the Trump administration: Donald Trump Jr. is an adviser to both Polymarket and Kalshi, and the Trump family-owned social media company Truth Social has a marketing collaboration with Crypto.com’s prediction market offering.