Novig
The exchange built by a sharp bettor banned by traditional sportsbooks that abandoned sweepstakes to win full CFTC federal approval.
In 2021, Harvard undergraduate Jacob Fortinsky was earning serious profits as a quantitative sharp bettor — until traditional sportsbooks like DraftKings and FanDuel systematically limited his account stakes to pennies. Frustrated by an industry that bans winning customers while charging 8% to 10% hidden house margins (vigorish), Fortinsky teamed up with his computer science classmate Kelechi Ukah to eliminate the house entirely. Their premise was simple: build an institutional-grade financial exchange where sports fans trade spreads and totals directly against each other. After joining Y Combinator's Summer 2022 batch, Novig raised a $6.4 million seed round in August 2023 backed by YC founder Paul Graham, NFL legend Joe Montana, and Lux Capital, laying the engineering groundwork for a zero-commission order book.
Novig's path to scale was defined by rapid regulatory pivots. The company initially launched in early 2024 as a state-licensed sportsbook in Colorado, but quickly recognized that state-by-state sports betting licenses were too slow and capital-intensive. In September 2024, Novig radically restructured into a dual-currency sweepstakes platform utilizing "Novig Coins" and "Novig Cash," allowing it to instantly expand across 40 U.S. states, including non-sportsbook giant markets like Texas and California. Trading volume exploded 50-fold, attracting an $18 million Series A led by Forerunner Ventures in August 2025. However, as state attorneys general began launching aggressive legal crackdowns on sweepstakes gambling in late 2025, shutting down operations in New York and New Jersey, Novig faced an existential crisis that threatened to erase its state-level access.
Rather than fighting fragmented state regulators, Fortinsky and Ukah executed an ambitious pivot to the federal level. On January 21, 2026, Novig filed an application with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under its corporate subsidiary Ludlow Exchange LLC to become a Designated Contract Market (DCM). Backed by a massive $75 million Series B round led by Pantera Capital in February 2026, Novig secured official CFTC approval on June 16, 2026. On August 4, 2026, Novig officially decommissioned its sweepstakes model and went live nationwide as a fully regulated federal event contract exchange, positioning itself as the primary sports-focused competitor to macro prediction platforms like Kalshi.