Meta Is Testing a Prediction-Market App Called Takes With Its Own Employees

Meta employees have begun testing a prediction-market app called Takes, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, November 13, citing people familiar with the matter. The app is an internal experiment for now: it is not available to the public, and it is unclear when — or whether — it will ever be released.

On Takes, employees wager on the outcome of questions or events using "cred," short for credibility, rather than real money. Correct calls earn cred points; wrong ones lose them. Meta declined to comment on the app, the Journal reported, and did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

An internal test before any public release

Testing a product with its own staff first is a familiar move for Meta, a process the company calls "dogfooding." New apps, products and features are routinely put in front of employees before any public launch, and the Journal's report frames Takes as exactly that kind of early internal trial.

The people familiar with the matter said that on Thursday, one of the questions on the app asked whether former Apple chief executive Tim Cook would become the next chief executive of Nvidia. That question is not hypothetical in the news cycle: US President Donald Trump said this week that Cook should replace Jensen Huang at Nvidia, a suggestion Innopark IT reported on November 13.

Why prediction markets are on Meta's radar

Prediction markets have become one of the fastest-growing corners of the consumer internet. Platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket let users put money on the outcomes of elections, sports, corporate events and more, and they are drawing a strikingly young audience: just over 60 percent of their users are under the age of 35, according to a recent S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan survey cited by Reuters.

The boom has also drawn serious money. Kalshi is in talks to raise fresh funds at a $65 billion valuation to build a platform for trading compute futures, Innopark IT reported in a separate story, and Polymarket has a data partnership with Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

Meta's version is different in one important respect: Takes does not let users wager real money. That distinction may matter if the app ever moves toward a public release, since real-money prediction markets operate under financial regulation in the United States and elsewhere. A points-based system would sidestep much of that — but it would also raise the question of what keeps users coming back when nothing is at stake.

A much bigger app-building push

The New York Times previously reported that Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg had directed a team at the company to create a prediction-market app, so Takes did not arrive out of nowhere. Zuckerberg has not spoken publicly about the prediction-market app, but he told employees in an internal meeting in the spring that he and product chief Chris Cox had been talking about building as many as 50 new apps, according to a recording reviewed by the Journal.

For now, though, Takes is only a test. Meta has announced no launch date, no public beta and no details about how the app would work outside the company. Until it does, the only people placing wagers on it are Meta's own employees — with points, not money.

Photo: Meta's headquarters campus in Menlo Park, California. The Takes app itself has not been shown publicly.

Sources

• The Wall Street Journal — Meta Testing New Prediction-Market App With Employees
• Channel NewsAsia (Reuters) — Meta employees test prediction-market app, WSJ reports