Founders: Tarek Mansour (CEO), Luana Lopes Lara
Launched: 2018
Headquarters: New York City
Funding: N/A
Valuation: $22 billion
Key Technologies: Blockchain, cloud computing
Industry: Prediction markets
Previous appearances on Disruptor 50 list: 0
Founded in 2018 by Lopes Lara and Mansour as MIT classmates, Kalshi's prediction markets allow users to trade contracts tied to real world outcomes in areas as diverse as weather, sports, pop culture, economics, and politics. Users buy "yes" or "no" contracts tied to whether an event will occur, and prices reflect that probability.
The idea has caught on quickly. Kalshi now runs the world's largest prediction markets and has grown to over $2 billion in transactions per week. The week of the New York City mayoral election last fall, Kalshi did over $130 million in election-related transaction volume. More recently, Kalshi recorded around $1 billion in trading volume during the Super Bowl, a 2,700% increase year over year.
Kalshi says its research shows that nearly half of Americans under 45 have already used an online financial or prediction market.
The company's valuation has been growing in lockstep with its users, raising $1 billion at a valuation of $22 billion earlier this month, doubling the valuation from a $1 billion investor round in December that had valued it at $11 billion valuation. Kalshi attributed the investor optimism to fast-growth in institutional trading volume, which increased 800% over the past six months, representing annualized trading volume of $178 billion.
Its growth has significant implications for companies across multiple sectors of the economy and society, from polling organizations like Pew, to gambling companies like DraftKings and FanDuel, media companies including CNBC, Fox and CNN, and financial services companies and exchanges where hedge funds and other investors are always looking for new ways to gain an edge. At least three exchange-traded fund companies are also planning to launch ETFs tracking prediction markets action, which could extend the reach of the new trading world as far as retirement plans.
Kalshi says its goal is to bring more truth to public discourse, allowing individuals and organizations to make more informed decisions. The examples of how that can be accomplished are widespread: consider a business hedging on Kalshi as a form of insurance in the event of social and economic events (e.g. hurricanes, labor strikes).
For many traders and investors, it seems clear that prediction markets are becoming a financial asset class, but it also depends on whom you ask.
Kalshi and its top competitor and fellow Disruptor Polymarket, which is based outside the U.S., are operating under intense scrutiny related to insider trading risks and contracts tied to specific geopolitical events, as well as the legal foundation for their businesses, which bypass regulations that gambling companies face.
The casino industry has hired powerful ex-politicos, including former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, to lead lobbying efforts, and states, with a notable case in Arizona, are stepping up with lawsuits of their own.
Kalshi recently suspended and fined three candidates for Congress for "political insider trading" activity on their own campaigns. Kalshi says its platform works properly to flag improper trades, and the main regulatory body overseeing prediction markets, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has taken a similar stance to date, saying existing insider trading frameworks are sufficient to regulate the industry.
But legislators remain wary and are looking for ways to crack down on the booming business.
A group of congressional Democrats has introduced legislation that would ban prediction market bets on elections, government actions, war and even sports, which has been a huge money maker for the platforms.
Kalshi is mounting its own offensive, launching an ad campaign and lobbying effort, seeking to distinguish itself from Polymarket and defend itself against allegations. It also brought Donald Trump Jr. on board as a strategic advisor in January 2025.
Lopes Lara and her co-founder have been undeterred at every step.
Elections trading markets volume began to boom after Kalshi successfully sued the U.S. government for the right to offer the trades ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Before the CTFC granted approval to prediction markets in 2020 (it oversees derivates markets in the U.S.) many people told the co-founders, "that's impossible. The odds are lower than 1%. You're never going to make that happen," Lopes Lara recalled in a CNBC interview earlier this year.
That determination goes back to the co-founders' MIT days. "We solved hard math problems, [and] we're going to figure out this regulatory-government problem," she recalled of their mindset in the CNBC interview. At the end of what she described as "all-nighters" at MIT, "we were like, why don't we just try to do this? Because we're putting so much time into this and at some point we should just probably try and see if we can get this somewhere. If someone is gonna make this happen, it should be us. ... We were so in love with this problem and this idea," she said.
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and a CNBC minority investment.
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