$300 million in funding + CFTC endorsement, Kalshi challenges the prediction market giant

Original Title: "300 Million Financing, CFTC Recognition, Kalshi Competes for Prediction Market Dominance"

Original Author: 1912212.eth, Foresight News

In the wave where crypto and finance intersect, prediction markets are becoming the next billion-dollar track. On October 10, the US-compliant prediction market platform Kalshi completed a financing round of over 300 million USD, with its valuation soaring to 5 billion USD. This round was led by Sequoia Capital and a16z, with existing shareholders such as Paradigm following up. Kalshi also plans to allow customers from more than 140 countries to place bets on its website.

Just four months ago, in June, Kalshi was valued at 2 billion USD in its 185 million USD round. Now, its valuation has doubled, reflecting investors' fervent confidence in prediction markets.

Star Team and VC Lineup

Kalshi was co-founded by Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara. Mansour graduated from MIT and is a veteran in quantitative trading, having served as an executive at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), with expertise in derivatives pricing and risk management. Lara comes from a Brazilian fintech background and was responsible for emerging market strategies at Morgan Stanley. The two targeted the overlooked "event contracts" in traditional finance—i.e., betting on predictions of future events.

Unlike Polymarket's blockchain-native approach, Kalshi chose to build a compliant platform from scratch, obtaining early regulatory approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), becoming the first regulated prediction market in the US. This "difficult but responsible path," as a16z Growth Fund partner Alex Immerman put it, allowed Kalshi to stand out amid regulatory storms.

The team lineup is Kalshi's core competitiveness. In addition to the founding duo, Kalshi has attracted several Wall Street elites and top tech talents. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Eli Levine comes from Google Cloud and has led large-scale data infrastructure projects, ensuring the platform's low latency and high throughput. Product lead Sarah Chen joined from Coinbase, where she spearheaded Kalshi's expansion into sports and political markets, seamlessly integrating complex parlay (combination betting).

Notably, Donald Trump Jr. joined Kalshi's advisory board in January 2025. The eldest Trump son not only brings political insight but also helps the platform explode in the election market—during the 2024 US presidential election, Kalshi's presidential win rate predictions reached an accuracy of 85%, far exceeding traditional polls. The team has grown to over 150 people, covering quantitative modeling, compliance, and user growth, with an average industry experience of over 10 years. This "Wall Street + Silicon Valley" hybrid model gives Kalshi a lead in product iteration: expanding from single event contracts to multi-dimensional markets such as sports, weather, and economic data, with average daily active users exceeding 100,000.

The VC lineup behind the financing is truly impressive, highlighting the strategic value of prediction markets. Sequoia Capital, the lead investor in this round, is a Silicon Valley legend with a portfolio including Airbnb and Stripe, and was an early backer of Kalshi's regulatory advantage. As a crypto-native fund, a16z's founder Marc Andreessen publicly praised Kalshi for "reshaping event-driven finance." Paradigm, which led the 185 million USD round in June, added to its investment this time, with a cumulative injection of over 200 million USD. Other investors include Coinbase Ventures and Bond Capital, the latter led by former a16z partner Mary Meeker and focused on data-driven platforms. Kalshi's total financing has reached about 591 million USD across three rounds: a 15 million USD seed round in 2021 (led by SV Angel), a 50 million USD Series A in 2023, and the current Series D.

Another competitor, Polymarket, was founded in 2020 by Shayne Coplan, positioning itself as a blockchain-native prediction market based on the Polygon chain, where users can bet directly with USDC. On October 7, 2025, Polymarket announced it had received up to 2 billion USD in investment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange.

Comparison with Polymarket

Data performance is the hard-core support for Kalshi's financing. Kalshi's liquidity pool depth has an average slippage of <0.1%, far below the industry average. Financially, the platform is already profitable, with revenue exceeding 200 million USD in the first half of 2025, mainly from a 0.5%-1% transaction fee. According to Dune data, Kalshi's weekly prediction market trading volume has quickly risen from a follower to surpass Polymarket.

Kalshi outperforms Polymarket on multiple dimensions. First, regulatory compliance: Kalshi is a CFTC-designated contract market (DCM), so US users do not need a VPN; Polymarket lost US traffic due to a 2022 ban and relies only on overseas users, recently re-entering the US market through the acquisition of QCX LLC, though the specific launch date is still unknown.

Second, user experience: Kalshi supports USD deposits and simplified KYC, making it suitable for institutions; Polymarket relies on crypto wallets, with higher gas fees and volatility. In terms of market coverage: Kalshi occupies the vast majority of the US market share, but has a lower share in other countries and regions, with richer sports and economic contracts; Polymarket focuses more on political and crypto events, but its US penetration rate remains low due to compliance factors.

According to the latest data from polymarketanalytics, although Kalshi's total trading volume is only 400 million USD, far behind Polymarket, it leads Polymarket in the total number of prediction markets and total open interest.

If we narrow the time frame, we can see Kalshi's rapid growth momentum. According to Artemis monitoring data, in the past year, Kalshi's market trading volume has soared 135 times to 956.3 million USD, while Polymarket's is only 464.6 million USD.

The latest data from The Block shows that the number of daily active prediction markets on Kalshi has hit a record high, rising to over 75,000.

It is worth mentioning that on November 6, 2024, Kalshi topped the free chart of the Apple App Store, surpassing Polymarket. In October this year, Kalshi's Head of Crypto, John Wang, said in an interview with The Block at the Token2049 conference in Singapore that Kalshi will appear on "every major crypto application and exchange" within the next 12 months.

Polymarket's founder once hinted on Twitter that a token, POLY, would be launched, and the market has begun to pay attention to whether Kalshi will also launch a token in the future. Although there are some market rumors speculating that it may explore tokenization in the future, there has been no mention of launching a token in official channels or financing announcements.