Kalshi Valuation: $40B Reported, $4B+ Revenue Run Rate

Kalshi spent its first two years asking a federal regulator for permission to exist.

That slow start is the reason it is now one of the most valuable private financial companies in the United States.

As of October 2026, Kalshi is finalizing a new funding round that would value it at around $40 billion, Bloomberg reported on September 30. A day earlier, Reuters reported that the round would raise about $1 billion, with Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management in talks to lead it. Kalshi has not announced the round, so $40 billion is a reported figure. Its latest confirmed valuation is $22 billion, from a $1 billion Series F that Kalshi announced in May 2026.

Revenue has moved even faster. The Information reported that World Cup trading pushed Kalshi to a revenue pace of more than $4 billion a year in July 2026, double the rate of two months earlier. Kalshi does not publish audited financials. Using Kalshi's public fee formula, InGame estimates the exchange collected $2.04 billion in fees in 2026 through October 6, up from about $263.5 million in all of 2025.

Fifteen months before the reported $40 billion round, Kalshi was worth $2 billion.

The short version of why: Kalshi got a federal exchange license that almost no consumer app had, fought its own regulator in court to list election markets, then used that license to offer sports contracts in every state and plug into brokerages like Robinhood. Sports turned a niche exchange into a mass-market product, and the money followed.

This is how it happened.

Kalshi's growth in one table

Date	Milestone
2018	Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara found Kalshi after meeting at MIT
November 2020	The CFTC designates KalshiEX as a regulated exchange (a designated contract market)
February 2021	Kalshi raises a $30M Series A led by Sequoia
September 2023	The CFTC blocks Kalshi's contracts on which party will control Congress
September–October 2024	A federal judge rules for Kalshi; an appeals court lets election trading go ahead before the 2024 vote
January 2025	Kalshi lists its first sports championship contracts
March 2025	Robinhood launches a prediction markets hub powered by Kalshi
May 2025	The CFTC drops its appeal in the election case
June 2025	$185M Series C at a $2B valuation
October 2025	$300M Series D at a $5B valuation; Kalshi opens to 140+ countries
November 2025	Kalshi reportedly tells investors it is on a $600M–$700M annualized net revenue pace
December 2025	$1B Series E at an $11B valuation; CNN and CNBC data partnerships
May 2026	$1B Series F at a $22B valuation; annualized trading volume reaches $178B
June 2026	Revenue reportedly passes a $2B annualized pace
July 2026	World Cup brings $27B in volume, by Kalshi's count, and 3M new users; revenue pace reportedly tops $4B
August–September 2026	Two federal appeals courts side with states on sports contracts; New Jersey asks the Supreme Court to step in
September 2026	Kalshi is reported to be finalizing about $1B at a roughly $40B valuation

1. Kalshi spent its first years getting licensed

Kalshi was founded in 2018 by Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara.

The two met as students at MIT. Fortune reported that an internship together at Five Rings Capital in New York in 2018 cemented the partnership, and that Kalshi went through Y Combinator a year later. Lopes Lara had danced ballet professionally before MIT.

According to Kalshi's Series A announcement, the founders had worked on event-driven hedging products for institutional investors at Goldman Sachs and Citadel. They wanted to build an event-based asset class for regular people.

The obvious way to do that was to launch an app and deal with regulators later. Kalshi did the opposite.

The company applied to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to become a designated contract market, the same type of federally regulated exchange as a futures exchange. Its designation order lists submissions running from December 2019 to September 2020.

On November 4, 2020, the CFTC announced that it had granted KalshiEX that status. Kalshi called itself the first regulated exchange dedicated to trading event contracts.

Three months later, Kalshi raised a $30 million Series A led by Sequoia, with Charles Schwab and KKR co-founder Henry Kravis also investing. Sequoia partner Alfred Lin joined the board, and he is still on it.

The license was slow and expensive to get. It also became the moat. When Andreessen Horowitz later explained its investment, it compared Kalshi to Coinbase: a company that put regulation first and earned trust and distribution as a result.

2. Kalshi sued its own regulator to list election markets

For its first few years, Kalshi was a small exchange for questions about the economy, weather and culture.

Elections were the obvious big market. In 2023, Kalshi asked the CFTC for approval to list contracts on which party would control the House and Senate.

On September 22, 2023, the CFTC blocked them. According to Judge Jia Cobb's later opinion, the agency concluded the contracts involved "gaming" and unlawful activity under a special rule in the Commodity Exchange Act.

Kalshi sued its regulator in November 2023.

In September 2024, Judge Cobb ruled that the CFTC had exceeded its authority. Her opinion said Kalshi's contracts "involve elections," which are neither unlawful activity nor gaming.

The CFTC appealed and briefly won a pause. On October 2, 2024, a D.C. Circuit panel declined to keep blocking the contracts because the agency had not shown irreparable harm, CNBC reported. Kalshi began taking trades on Congress that day and opened presidential markets soon after, five weeks before the election.

The 2024 presidential market alone drew $536 million in volume on Kalshi, InGame reported. More important, Kalshi had shown it could beat its own regulator in court on a question the regulator had already ruled against.

In May 2025, the CFTC moved to drop its appeal, and the D.C. Circuit dismissed the case on May 7, 2025.

3. Sports turned Kalshi into a mass-market product

Elections happen every two years. Sports happen every day.

On January 22, 2025, Kalshi filed a self-certification with the CFTC for a "Will <team> win <title>?" contract covering the Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, NBA and NCAA championships. Under CFTC rules, an exchange can certify a new contract itself rather than wait for approval. Kalshi listed the markets the next day.

Round-by-round March Madness markets followed within weeks, and parlays arrived in September 2025.

The financial effect was enormous. InGame estimated that Kalshi collected $263.5 million in fees in 2025, and that $234.6 million of it, or 89%, came from sports. Over the final four months of the year, sports made up well over 90% of fee revenue.

Kalshi's pitch to sports fans was that it was an exchange, not a sportsbook. Users trade with each other rather than against a house. Kalshi makes money from a fee on each trade, which is highest on contracts priced near 50/50.

The legal argument was that, as a CFTC-regulated exchange, Kalshi could offer these contracts in all 50 states, including states where sports betting is illegal. That argument drove the growth. It also created Kalshi's biggest risk, covered below.

4. Kalshi plugged into brokerages instead of building every customer itself

Kalshi did not rely only on its own app to find traders.

On March 17, 2025, Robinhood launched a prediction markets hub inside its app. At launch, the contracts were offered through KalshiEX and covered the men's and women's college basketball tournaments and the Federal Reserve's May rate decision.

That put Kalshi's markets inside an app that retail traders already used, with accounts that were already funded.

By October 2025, Andreessen Horowitz described Kalshi as "the partner of choice" for major brokerages like Robinhood and Webull.

The model works like a wholesale exchange.

Kalshi lists the markets and holds the liquidity. Brokerages bring customers. Every new broker adds traders to the same order book, which makes prices tighter and the markets more attractive to the next broker.

The weakness is that a large partner can decide to build its own exchange. Robinhood has started doing exactly that.

5. Kalshi made its prices the number people quote

Kalshi has worked hard to make its odds part of the news, not just a product.

On December 2, 2025, CNN named Kalshi its official prediction markets partner. CNN's chief data analyst Harry Enten uses Kalshi data on air, and a Kalshi-powered ticker runs during those segments. Axios reported that CNN does not pay to license the data, and that the deal is exclusive.

Two days later, CNBC announced a multi-year exclusive partnership that put Kalshi data into shows like Squawk Box and Fast Money starting in 2026.

These deals are distribution. Every time a network shows a Kalshi probability, it advertises the exchange to an audience that might never search for a prediction market.

Kalshi has also leaned on accuracy as marketing. In its December 2025 funding announcement, it said its market called the New York City mayoral election eight minutes after polls closed, hours before the media.

The data angle is growing. Kalshi and Tradeweb partnered in February 2026 to bring Kalshi signals into Tradeweb's institutional products, and Tradeweb took a minority stake, Finance Magnates reported. The same report said Kalshi estimates roughly three-quarters of its users have never deposited money. They use Kalshi to check odds, not to trade.

6. Kalshi kept adding markets to fill the calendar

A sports-only exchange has slow days. Kalshi has kept adding products that trade every day of the week.

Parlays went live in the app at the end of September 2025, according to InGame. In October 2025, Kalshi opened to users in more than 140 countries with a single global pool of liquidity, rather than separate regional markets.

In December 2025, Kalshi launched 15-minute crypto markets: short contracts on whether a coin's price will rise or fall in the next window. They barely registered at first.

By September 2026, those markets were bringing in more than $2 million a day in fees, InGame reported. Including similar 15-minute markets on commodities and indices, short-window markets earned $20.4 million in fees in the week to October 5. Non-sports markets made up 19.2% of Kalshi's 2026 fee revenue, up from 11% in 2025.

Kalshi has also built hubs around recurring events: a Midterms Hub in July 2026 and a Public Companies Hub in August 2026, which bundles earnings-related markets with company data. Both give users a reason to come back on days with no big game.

7. Kalshi spent heavily around tentpole events

Kalshi's growth surges around events that capture national attention. The 2026 FIFA World Cup was the biggest yet.

According to Sports Business Journal, Kalshi signed endorsement deals with retired stars including Clint Dempsey, Rio Ferdinand and David Villa. It also sponsored Argentina's national team, home to Lionel Messi, and ran a brand spot featuring Timothée Chalamet. During the knockout stage, it bought pitch-side visibility through a deal with FIFA sponsor ADI Predictstreet.

The results were huge by any standard. Kalshi said it took $27 billion in World Cup volume including parlays. Analytics tool TickerTracker put the figure at $12.4 billion excluding parlays.

Kalshi's head of sports partnerships told SBJ the company added 3 million users during the tournament. He said about one-third of them have since traded on something other than sports.

Revenue followed. The Information reported that World Cup wagers helped double Kalshi's revenue pace to more than $4 billion in July 2026.

The spending is also large. The same Information report, as summarized by TEXXR, said Kalshi's operating expenses reached $300 million in June 2026. That is the cost of buying attention around the biggest moments.

8. Kalshi went after Wall Street, not just retail

Kalshi's first big wave of growth came from consumers. Its latest pitch to investors is about institutions.

When Kalshi announced its $22 billion round in May 2026, it said institutional trading volume had risen 800% over the previous six months. It said it would use the money to win hedge funds, asset managers, proprietary trading firms and insurers. Coatue founder Philippe Laffont put it simply: "Consumers have already embraced it, and we believe institutions will follow."

Kalshi is also widening what it lists. According to the Reuters report on the new round, Kalshi wants to become a one-stop trading platform across asset classes, competing with exchange groups like CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange.

Investors are paying for the chance that Kalshi becomes a major exchange, not just a sports-heavy betting app.

9. Kalshi raised money at every inflection point

Kalshi's funding history has two very different halves.

After its Series A in 2021, Kalshi went quiet. When it announced its next round in June 2025, Mansour wrote that it had been "more than three years since we announced our last round of funding."

Then it raised four rounds in less than 11 months:

June 2025: $185 million Series C at a $2 billion valuation, led by Paradigm. Mansour wrote that it was only Paradigm's third investment outside crypto, after Stripe and Citadel.
October 2025: $300 million Series D at a $5 billion valuation, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, with Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, General Catalyst, Spark Capital and CapitalG.
December 2025: $1 billion Series E at an $11 billion valuation, led by Paradigm.
May 2026: $1 billion Series F at a $22 billion valuation, led by Coatue, with Sequoia, a16z, IVP, Paradigm, Morgan Stanley and ARK Invest.

Each round roughly doubled the last. The December round made both founders billionaires; Forbes reported that Lopes Lara became the world's youngest self-made woman billionaire at 29.

The money paid for brokerage integrations, liquidity, new markets, marketing and legal fights in many states at once.

How fast did Kalshi grow?

Kalshi's growth shows up in four sets of numbers: volume, revenue, users and valuation. Most of them come from the company or from reporting, not audited filings.

Trading volume

In October 2025, Kalshi said volume had grown 200 times in a year, and that it handled more than 60% of global prediction market activity.
In December 2025, it said weekly volume had passed $1 billion, up more than 1,000% from 2024.
In May 2026, it said annualized volume had more than tripled in six months, from $52 billion to $178 billion. It also claimed more than 90% of US prediction market activity.

Revenue

2025: about $263.5 million in fees, according to InGame's estimate from Kalshi's fee formula.
November 2025: a $600 million to $700 million annualized net revenue pace, which Kalshi reportedly told investors, per The Information as summarized by TEXXR.
June 2026: more than $2 billion annualized, The Information reported, alongside early IPO discussions.
July 2026: more than $4 billion annualized, per The Information.
2026 through October 6: about $2.04 billion in fees, per InGame's estimate.

The difference between those last two numbers matters. A run rate takes one strong month and multiplies it by 12. July was a World Cup month. The year-to-date figure is what Kalshi actually collected, by InGame's estimate, and it excludes market-maker rebates and other income.

Users

Kalshi has not published a total user count. The best public markers:

In October 2025, Kalshi said its user base had grown 20 times in a year.
In February 2026, Sensor Tower data cited by Covers showed Kalshi's monthly active users rising from 600,000 at the start of 2025 to 5.1 million.
In July 2026, Kalshi told SBJ it added 3 million users during the World Cup.

Valuation

$2 billion in June 2025. $5 billion in October. $11 billion in December. $22 billion in May 2026. A reported $40 billion as of October 2026.

That is a 20-fold increase in about 15 months, if the latest round closes at the reported price.

Kalshi's growth loop

Kalshi's growth comes down to a liquidity loop that the federal license made possible:

A CFTC license lets Kalshi offer the same markets nationwide.
Big events, especially sports, bring new traders.
Brokerages and media partners bring more traders and more attention.
More traders mean deeper order books and tighter prices.
Better prices attract market makers and institutions.
More liquidity lets Kalshi list more markets, from 15-minute crypto to earnings calls.
Volume generates fees, and rising fees support bigger funding rounds.
New capital pays for marketing, partnerships and legal defense of the license.

The legal fight is part of the loop: every court win protects the nationwide reach that makes the liquidity pool valuable.

What could slow Kalshi down?

The courts could take away sports in many states

This is the biggest risk, and it is unresolved.

State gaming regulators say Kalshi's sports contracts are sports bets that must follow state law. Kalshi says the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction over contracts traded on its exchange. In a petition to the Supreme Court, New Jersey said the dispute had already dragged at least 20 states into litigation.

The federal appeals courts are split:

Third Circuit, April 6, 2026: sided with Kalshi against New Jersey. In a 2–1 decision, the court held that Kalshi was likely to show its sports contracts are swaps on a CFTC-licensed exchange, so federal law preempts New Jersey's gambling laws.
Ninth Circuit, August 28, 2026: sided with Nevada. The court affirmed the dissolution of Kalshi's injunction for sports contracts and sent the question of election contracts back to the lower court.
Sixth Circuit, September 25, 2026: sided with Ohio and Tennessee. The court held that Kalshi had not shown its sports contracts are swaps, and that even if they were, federal law does not preempt the states' gambling laws.
Fourth Circuit: Kalshi's appeal against Maryland was argued on May 7, 2026 and had not been decided as of mid-October.

New Jersey asked the Supreme Court to take the case on September 2, 2026. Kalshi's response is due November 9. Ohio, 38 other states and the District of Columbia have filed a brief supporting New Jersey, as have the NFL, the American Gaming Association and 145 tribes and tribal organizations.

Where Kalshi loses, it may have to block sports trading for residents of that state. The Sixth Circuit specifically said geofencing is feasible. With sports driving most of Kalshi's fees, a broad loss would hit revenue hard.

The CFTC is on Kalshi's side, for now

The federal regulator that once fought Kalshi is now pushing for federal control. In March 2026, the CFTC opened a rulemaking process on prediction markets, and Chairman Michael Selig said the agency "will exercise its exclusive jurisdiction." On September 28, 2026, the CFTC sent the White House proposed rules that would define prediction market event contracts as swaps, according to Blank Rome.

That helps Kalshi, but courts do not have to agree with the agency.

Robinhood is building its own exchange

Robinhood was one of Kalshi's most important distribution partners. In June 2026, Bloomberg reported that Robinhood had begun routing some World Cup contracts to Rothera, an exchange it jointly controls with Susquehanna. Robinhood's exchange took $3.38 billion in straight World Cup wagers, according to TickerTracker data cited by SBJ.

If more brokers follow, Kalshi's wholesale distribution gets weaker.

Competition is getting serious

Polymarket now runs a US platform and is in separate talks to raise about $1 billion, according to Reuters. Its US exchange took $3.29 billion in straight World Cup wagers, per the same SBJ data. Sportsbooks DraftKings and FanDuel launched their own prediction markets in December 2025 and January 2026, Covers reported. Kalshi's lead is large, but the category is no longer empty.

It still looks a lot like sports betting

Critics argue the product is gambling under another name. InGame's reporting cites a problem-gambling counselor who compared 15-minute crypto markets to slot machines. Senator Adam Schiff and other lawmakers have raised concerns about the growth of prediction markets, according to Reuters. Political pressure could shape both the courts and the CFTC's final rules.

Growth is tied to events

Kalshi's biggest months line up with the NFL season, March Madness, the World Cup and elections, and the $4 billion run rate came from a World Cup month. Keeping users trading between those events is the challenge.

Borrowing Kalshi's "be the number people quote" move

Kalshi grew partly because CNN and CNBC began quoting its odds, which put the brand in front of people who never went looking for it. The startup version is being the source that articles and AI answers cite in your category, and Okara's Writer Agent drafts strategy-led articles you can publish. The GEO Agent then tracks up to 15 AI search prompts in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kalshi's valuation?

As of October 2026, Kalshi is finalizing a funding round of about $1 billion at a valuation of around $40 billion, according to Bloomberg and Reuters. Kalshi has not announced that round. Its latest confirmed valuation is $22 billion, from a $1 billion Series F led by Coatue and announced in May 2026. The Wall Street Journal first reported the $22 billion valuation in March 2026, which is why some reports date that round to March.

How much revenue does Kalshi make?

Kalshi does not publish audited revenue. The Information reported that Kalshi's revenue pace passed $2 billion a year in June 2026 and topped $4 billion a year in July, helped by the World Cup. InGame, using Kalshi's public fee formula, estimates Kalshi collected about $2.04 billion in fees in 2026 through October 6, and about $263.5 million in 2025.

How does Kalshi make money?

Kalshi earns most of its revenue from fees on trades. The fee depends on the contract price and is highest for contracts near 50/50 odds. InGame estimates fees averaged a little under 1.2% of volume in 2025. Kalshi also runs an in-house market-making arm, Kalshi Trading, whose results it has not published.

How much funding has Kalshi raised?

Kalshi has announced a $30 million Series A in 2021, a $185 million Series C in June 2025, a $300 million Series D in October 2025, a $1 billion Series E in December 2025 and a $1 billion Series F in May 2026. That is about $2.5 billion across those announced rounds. A further round of about $1 billion was reported to be close to final in late September 2026.

Who founded Kalshi?

Tarek Mansour, the CEO, and Luana Lopes Lara, the COO, founded Kalshi in 2018 after meeting at MIT. Both had worked in finance before starting the company. Forbes and Fortune estimated in December 2025 that each owns about 12% of Kalshi.

How many users does Kalshi have?

Kalshi has not published a total user count. Sensor Tower data reported in February 2026 showed about 5.1 million monthly active users, up from 600,000 at the start of 2025. Kalshi said it added 3 million users during the 2026 World Cup, and it estimates that about three-quarters of its users have never deposited money.

Is Kalshi legal in every state?

Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated exchange and operates nationwide, but its sports contracts are being challenged by state regulators. As of October 2026, the Third Circuit has sided with Kalshi, while the Ninth and Sixth Circuits have sided with Nevada, Ohio and Tennessee. New Jersey has asked the Supreme Court to decide the question. Availability of sports markets can differ by state while those cases continue.

Is Kalshi going public?

Not yet. Bloomberg reported in September 2026 that the round Kalshi is finalizing is expected to be its last before an IPO, which could come as soon as 2027. Kalshi has not set a date.