Prediction market startup Kalshi announced Thursday it raised $1 billion in fresh capital that doubled its valuation and two cofounders’ fortunes to $2.6 billion in the matter of six months, according to sources familiar with the company.
Key Facts
- Kalshi’s two 29-year-old cofounders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara—who took the title of world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire in December—each own roughly 12% in the company now valued at $22 billion, Forbes estimates.
- Last December, Kalshi raised $1 billion at a $11 billion valuation, landing Mansour and Lopes Lara on the billionaires list for the first time with each cofounder’s fortune worth $1.3 billion.
- The new funding round, which comes only six months after its first $1 billion round, was led by investment firm Coatue, with participation from investors including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Morgan Stanley and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest.
- Kalshi, a prediction marketplace where users can bet on the probability of real-world events, said the new round of funding will go to address explosive demand from institutions including hedge funds, trading firms and insurance companies, expanding beyond its retail offerings to build products for established financial firms.
- Kalshi hosts 2 million monthly active traders who engage in over 90% of U.S. prediction market activity, with annualized trading volume more than tripling in the last six months to $178 billion and annualized revenue topping $1.5 billion this month, the company said.
Forbes Valuation
Lopes Lara became the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire last December, when Kalshi raised $1 billion and its valuation quintupled in less than six months to $11 billion. A Brazilian native and former professional ballerina who studied computer science at MIT, Lopes Lara unseated Scale AI cofounder Lucy Guo who took the title from Taylor Swift in April 2025. Kalshi’s December billion-dollar funding round and its cofounders’ new billionaire statuses came on the heels of the success of its chief rival: Polymarket’s 27-year-old solo founder Shayne Coplan became one of the world’s youngest billionaires last October, when New York Stock Exchange parent company Intercontinental Exchange invested $2 billion into his company.
Key Background
Kalshi was founded in 2018 by MIT classmates Mansour and Lopes Lara as a financial exchange where users trade “yes” or “no” contracts on the outcomes of real-world events—from elections to Fed decisions to NFL games. After more than two years in regulatory limbo, the company secured approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in November 2020, becoming the first federally-regulated event-contract exchange in the U.S., and launched publicly in July 2021. Kalshi took off in 2024, when a federal court ruling cleared the way for it to list election contracts just before the U.S. presidential election, triggering a surge in trading volume. That massive traction has since been compounded by an aggressive push into sports, which accounts for more than 70% of platform activity. Its surging popularity has been mirrored in valuation, with Kalshi’s valuation skyrocketing from $2 billion in June 2025 to $22 billion today. Though initially gaining traction around retail traders, especially sports bettors, the company has increasingly been leaning into institutional adoption. Billionaire Jeff Yass’ hedge fund Susquehanna International Group joined Kalshi as a market maker—trading on and providing liquidity to Kalshi’s markets—in April 2024, while investment firms like Cathie Wood’s ARK invest have started using Kalshi data to inform its investment strategy and request new markets. The firm has built up an extensive range of partnerships: Robinhood and Coinbase offer Kalshi markets to its users, while CNN, CNBC and Fox Corporation use Kalshi data in their reporting.
Chief Critic
The rapid growth of prediction markets have drawn critics who liken these markets to gambling, particularly from state regulators who govern and tax gambling operations. At least 10 states are pursuing legal action against Kalshi, arguing its sports markets should be classified as gambling and regulated by states. While Kalshi has won injunctions in New Jersey and Tennessee, it has lost in Maryland, Ohio, Nevada and Massachusetts. The prediction market-friendly administration has countered legal action from states to protect Kalshi’s federally regulated status: On April 2, the Trump administration sued Connecticut, Arizona and Illinois, arguing that the federal government has exclusive authority over regulating these markets. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., is an advisor to both Kalshi and its chief rival Polymarket.
This story was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
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