Q2 2026: Kambi Marks Turning Point with Fully AI-Traded World Cup

When Kambi’s Q2 2026 results came out, industry experts were not surprised by the impressive growth. It was just a confirmation of something the company had been working toward for a while. Revenue was up 13.5% year-on-year, from $46.2m to $52.4m.

Adjusted EBITA was nearly 2x. And the FIFA World Cup, the first major tournament Kambi processed entirely through its AI trading system, produced more than 100 million bets. It meant $1.14bn in sportsbook turnover over the course of 78 matches. CEO Werner Becher said the company had turned a corner. The numbers backed him up.

US operations and betPARX

Kambi’s footprint in the US runs through several state-level partnerships. betPARX Sportsbook ranks as one of its most prominent American operators. The online casino leader betPARX sits at the core of Kambi’s ecosystem. The team at Kambi is building a broader ecosystem to capture the market, so it knows that its relationship with major online casino players matters more now than it did a few years ago.

Kambi’s partners in the Americas generated 57% of FIFA World Cup 2026 volume. This is up from 38% during the 2022 edition. A lot of that shift reflects both the growth of legal sports betting across the U.S. and Kambi’s efforts to scale its technology to better serve operators.

The FIFA World Cup numbers

The 57% Americas figure isn’t purely about kick-off times, though that played a role. It reflects the maturation of the US betting market and how deeply embedded technology partners like Kambi have become in the infrastructure behind it.

Average turnover per match was up around 20% compared to the 2022 World Cup. Live bet builders made up 22% of all live bets, versus 3% four years earlier. For fans who follow matches through live sports streaming, being able to build custom bets in real time during a game has changed how engagement translates into wagering activity.

The AI system behind the numbers

In the World Cup final alone, Kambi recorded more than one million unique betting combinations. Handling that volume manually would have been impossible at any practical scale. Becher described it on the earnings call: the AI trading system priced and traded all 104 games pre-match and live without needing to increase the number of human traders. That’s the core competitive argument Kambi is now making.

While other suppliers managed the World Cup load and then had to scale back down for the domestic season, Kambi’s system doesn’t require that adjustment. Soccer is fully automated. Basketball, football, baseball, and ice hockey are next.

What this means for operators

The transition has direct consequences for operator partners. Higher trading margins, more consistent live bet coverage, and the ability to offer a wider range of in-game markets without the operational overhead that manual trading requires. The World Cup delivered an 18% operator trading margin. That’s the kind of number that makes the technology argument easier to understand than any product presentation would.

The distinction between what Kambi is building and other wagering structures is worth noting. The debate around prediction market vs sports betting, for instance, centers on market structure and regulation, but Kambi is operating inside traditional licensed sportsbook frameworks, with AI applied to the pricing and trading layer rather than to the fundamental commercial model.

Where the company sits now

Operating profit came in at $6.6m, up from $1.8m. Headcount has dropped below 1,000 and is expected to go down further as the company transitions towards an automated work environment.

There was a technical downtime issue in April that management chose to account for transparently rather than treat as exceptional, which the market appeared to receive well. Kambi’s share price was up around 10% at the time of reporting.

The company’s argument, clearly demonstrated in the results, is that by automating its entire soccer offering during the world’s biggest sporting tournament, it has gained an advantage that competitors will find difficult to overcome. Wimbledon and the French Open were already traded using AI this year. Tennis is, in Becher’s words, effectively fully onboarded. The rest of the sports calendar is next.