A new academic-industry partnership is training a microscope on prediction markets and artificial intelligence.
The collaboration between Layer-1 blockchain Pharos Network and the University of Hong Kong (KHU) will see Master’s students at HKU Business School spend three months diving deep into how AI can improve predictive decision-making.
During their research, students from diverse academic backgrounds will work directly with live on-chain datasets supplied by Pharos and receive ongoing guidance from the project’s team.
The announcement follows news of Pharos’ Series A funding round, which raised $44 million from investors such as Sumitomo Corporation and Chainlink.
Supporting On-chain and AI prediction models
Beyond the classroom research, promising work completed during the study may be rewarded with funding through Pharos’ ecosystem incubator. This $10 million global program supports early-stage RWA and DeFi initiatives on the Pharos chain, offering select projects technical resources, guidance, and funding to help turn academic ideas into deployments.
“The essence of prediction markets lies in the accuracy of data input and value output, aligning perfectly with AI’s capabilities, and Pharos aims to be not only a settlement layer for financial assets but also a verification layer for information,” said Wish Wu, Co-founder and CEO of Pharos.
“Through this research collaboration, we hope to explore how our high-performance, low-latency infrastructure can support more sophisticated on-chain + AI prediction models. This is a key area of focus within the Pharos $10 million incubator program, specifically targeting outcome prediction markets for real-world events.”
During the project, which also involves the University of Hong Kong-Standard Chartered Foundation FinTech Academy, Pharos will showcase its high-performance AI tech stack to support complex prediction applications. A core pillar of the EVM-compatible Layer-1 blockchain is its Smart Access List Inference (SALI) Parallel Execution Engine, which is capable of up to 30,000 TPs and sub-second finality.
Dr. You Yang, Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Hong Kong, explained that the project will investigate practical uses of binary option mechanisms in domains such as RWA pricing and auction design.
“While the commercial potential of prediction markets is evident, trading volume remains concentrated in entertainment-driven areas like sports and political betting,” commented Yang.
“This project will explore, from an academic perspective, how binary option mechanisms can be applied to RWA pricing, auction design, and corporate earnings forecasts, driving a paradigm shift from entertainment betting to real economic decision-making tools. Our collaboration with Pharos Network offers students a unique opportunity to test these theoretical frameworks in a real-world tech environment.”
Pharos, which has officially deployed its X402 AI module and purports to be protocol-ready for large-scale intelligent agent interaction, expects the initiative to deliver fresh perspectives that influence broader industry developments.
