Kalshi Said to Seek a $40 Billion Valuation, Nearly Doubling Its Price in Three Months

Kalshi, the only federally licensed prediction-market exchange in the United States, is seeking a private valuation of roughly $40 billion in a new funding round that could close in the third quarter, CoinDesk reported — nearly double the $22 billion it commanded just three months ago, when it raised $1 billion in a round backed by Coatue Management, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Morgan Stanley. The new round's size and investors have not been disclosed, and CNBC reported that sources close to the company said it is not actively raising at the moment — so treat the figure as a target, not a closed deal.

A private valuation is a price set by negotiation between a company and prospective investors; it carries no guarantee of liquidity and can differ sharply from what a public market would assign.

What Kalshi is

Kalshi runs a prediction market: a venue where traders buy and sell contracts tied to the outcome of real-world events — elections, sports results, economic data. A winning contract pays a fixed amount and a losing one expires worthless, so a contract's price implies the crowd's probability estimate for that outcome. Crucially, Kalshi is a registered exchange overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which makes its contracts federally regulated derivatives — distinct from rival Polymarket, which settles in crypto and has operated largely outside the U.S. regulatory perimeter.

The race with Polymarket

The valuation gap is the headline. Polymarket has been reported to be seeking funding at around $15 billion — a figure that, if Kalshi's $40 billion holds, would put the regulated U.S. exchange far ahead in investors' eyes. Both have ridden a boom in event-contract trading: the 2024 U.S. election supercharged the sector, and sports contracts have since become the dominant driver of volume.

That growth has pulled in mainstream distribution. Brokerage Robinhood now routes users to Kalshi event contracts, and established exchanges are entering the space — Cboe Global Markets just launched an S&P 500 prediction market, and Meta is reportedly building a standalone app, "Arena," both of which Boursel has covered. Chief executive Tarek Mansour said an eventual IPO is on the table but not before 2027: "A company of our financial profile with the rate of growth that we're seeing, that sort of conversation has to happen," he told CoinDesk.

The regulatory fault line

Kalshi's federal status is both its moat and a flashpoint. The CFTC has reasserted its jurisdiction over prediction markets and sued several states — including Kentucky — to block them from applying gambling laws to CFTC-registered platforms, a fight Boursel reported on when the CFTC took on Kentucky. The agency has also opened rulemaking on which event contracts are permissible. Whether a $40 billion price tag holds at an eventual IPO will hinge on whether prediction-market volume proves durable beyond election years — a question the sports data have, so far, answered in the affirmative.