Market pulse: Google jumps to favorite in year-end AI race after Gemini 4 Carbon tops leaderboard (Oct. 29)
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Kalshi traders now give Google about a 51% chance of having the top-ranked AI model on Dec. 31, up from about 32% a day earlier.
Anthropic, maker of Claude, fell from about 59% to about 31% in the same market, losing the favorite's spot it has held for months.
The swing followed Google's Oct. 28 announcement of Gemini 4 Carbon, which debuted at No. 1 on the LMArena text leaderboard.
Polymarket shows the same flip, with Google near 53% and Anthropic near 30%.
For most of this year, the betting crowd has treated Anthropic as the company to beat in the race for the best AI chatbot. That changed in about a day. After Google announced a new model on Wednesday, traders on two prediction markets moved Google into first place for the end of 2026.
As of about 10 a.m. Pacific on Thursday, Kalshi's "Best AI on Dec 31, 2026" market priced Google's Gemini at 51 cents on the dollar, which works out to roughly a 51% chance in traders' eyes. A day earlier it sat near 32 cents. Anthropic's Claude moved the other way, from about 59 cents to about 31 cents. OpenAI's ChatGPT barely moved, at about 7%. More than 2.9 million contracts each have traded on the Gemini and Claude sides over the life of the market, so this is not a thin corner of the site.
This is a market, not a forecast
Prediction-market prices show what traders are willing to pay right now. They are not a prediction from Willamette News, and they can swing hard. Two months is a long time in AI, where a new model from any of the big labs can reshuffle the rankings overnight. Treat the number as the crowd's current read, nothing more.
What moved the market
Google announced Gemini 4 Carbon on Oct. 28 and called it the company's strongest model yet, Mashable reported. It arrived only about two weeks after Google's previous top model, Gemini 4 Argon, reached the Gemini app. Arena, which runs the LMArena leaderboards, added Carbon to its text, agent and web development rankings the same day.
On the LMArena text leaderboard, where people vote on which of two anonymous chatbot answers they like better, Carbon now sits first with a score of 1,528. Google's Argon is second at 1,520 and Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 is third at 1,509. Carbon's score is still marked preliminary, based on about 4,400 votes, and the leaderboard lists its possible rank as first or second.
That leaderboard matters because Kalshi's year-end contract settles on it. Whichever company holds the top spot on the LMArena text board on Dec. 31 wins, using the version of the board with the style-control setting turned off.
Most people cannot use Carbon yet. Google is starting with a small group of approved cybersecurity testers and has not given a public launch date, according to Mashable. Mashable also noted that the model leads on 15 of 17 benchmarks in Google's own comparison table, figures Google reported itself.
A second opinion from Polymarket
Polymarket, another prediction market, landed in nearly the same place. Its "Which company has best AI model end of 2026?" market showed Google at about 53% and Anthropic at about 30% on Thursday morning, with Google up about 12 points and Anthropic down about 17 over the past day. When two separate markets agree this closely, the move looks like a reaction to real news rather than one large trade.
The flip stands out because Anthropic has been the steady pick. Polymarket's monthly versions of the same question settled on Anthropic at the end of every month from February through July. Its end-of-October market now has Google at about 98%.
Why it matters in Oregon
The AI race is not just a Silicon Valley story. Google runs a large data center campus in The Dalles, and the computing demand behind models like these is part of why cities across Oregon are debating how many big data centers they want. Salem is one of them: the City Council is weighing a code interpretation that would exclude AI and hyperscale data centers, with a hearing set for Nov. 9.
What's next
Watch for a wider Carbon release from Google and for answers from Anthropic and OpenAI. Each lab has claimed the lead within weeks of the last one this fall. Expect these markets to move again the next time one of them ships.
Sources: Kalshi best AI market, Polymarket best AI model end of 2026 market, LMArena text leaderboard, Arena leaderboard changelog, Mashable on Gemini 4 Carbon. Market prices were checked about 10 a.m. PT on Oct. 29, 2026, and will have changed since. Cover photo: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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For information only, not betting or investment advice. Prediction markets reflect trader prices, not certainties. Willamette News has no financial relationship with Kalshi or Polymarket.
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