Fire Ice

What is Fire Ice?

Convened by Texas State Senator Bryan Hughes, the hearing in the Senate Committee on State Affairs examined the relationship between federally regulated derivatives markets and state-prohibited gambling. Research from Eilers & Krejcik Gaming in April found that 43% of activity from sports event contracts came from two states, Texas and California. A separate breakout of Texas activity alone is not publicly available.

At Tuesday’s hearing, AGA Vice President Tres York testified before the committee alongside Robert DeNault, head of enforcement and legal counsel at Kalshi. The AGA, one of the nation’s most strident critics of prediction markets, argued that an event contract on the Cowboys to beat the Giants does not differ fundamentally from the same wager placed at a sportsbook.

As with California, sports wagering is illegal in Texas. Greg Abbott, a three-term governor, is up for re-election in November, along with Dan Patrick, his lieutenant governor. Patrick, who vehemently opposes sports betting, also serves as president of the Texas Senate in his current role. Several attempts to legalise sports wagering since the 2018 PASPA decision have been foiled under Patrick’s leadership.

What is Fire Ice?

“We’re doing this 100%,” COO Stefan Grenstad says of Cubeia’s AI-driven development process.

Now, the focus is on what the company does with the additional capacity AI has created. Six months ago, Cubeia’s experiment was essentially about replacing human-written code with AI-generated code.

Since then, it has evolved into something broader: a different development pipeline, a different role for developers and quality assurance (QA), a different way of organising teams and, increasingly, a different relationship with customers.

What is Fire Ice?

The two companies began collaborating in November 2025. As part of the deal, Polymarket provided data for a dedicated prediction market section on Yahoo Finance. The feature provided market-based probabilities of economic, political, and financial developments alongside Yahoo Finance content. 

The Yahoo Finance prediction market section was taken out in April. The companies have now confirmed that the larger deal is also off, as reported by Bloomberg. 

Yahoo said Polymarket is still an advertising partner and suggested the two could collaborate on other projects in the future. Polymarket has not provided any public explanation for the end of the data partnership.