Kalshi raised $1 billion in a funding round that values the prediction-market exchange at $40 billion, nearly doubling its valuation in five months as trading on elections, sports and other events surges.
The Series G was co-led by Wellington Management and Sequoia Capital. Baillie Gifford, Stripes, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Layer Global, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, CapitalG, Hudson River Trading and Balyasny Asset Management also invested. The $40 billion figure is a post-money valuation.
From $5 billion to $40 billion
Kalshi was valued at $22 billion in a round completed in May and at roughly $5 billion a year ago. The company said annualized trading volume across prediction markets, commodities, crypto and perpetual futures has passed $1 trillion. Growth since the spring has been driven by the World Cup, the NFL season and its parlay-style combination contracts, and betting on the U.S. midterm elections. Its latest valuation is roughly twice that reported for rival Polymarket.
Kalshi says it wants to become a broader financial exchange, with event contracts as a starting point. It plans to use the money to build leveraged event contracts, perpetual futures linked to individual stocks and markets that let traders bet on the price of computing power. It will also expand its institutional business; the company said in September that it worked with about 500 institutions, which excluding market makers accounted for a quarter of its volume.
Legal fight and IPO talk
The funding comes amid an unsettled legal fight over who regulates sports-related event contracts. Two federal appeals courts ruled this year that states can police them, while a third sided with Kalshi’s view that federal oversight governs, setting up a likely Supreme Court case. Chief Executive Tarek Mansour has said a move to the public markets is under consideration, though not before 2027, and the size of this round has fueled expectations that it will be Kalshi’s last as a private company.
