Kalshi said on Oct. 29 that it closed a $1 billion Series G round at a $40 billion post-money valuation, extending a run that has turned the prediction market company into one of the most highly valued private firms in the sector.
The round was co-led by Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management. Baillie Gifford, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Coatue Management and Andreessen Horowitz also took part, and Reuters reported that Tiger Global and Dragoneer were included as well.
This was Kalshi’s second $1 billion raise in five months. Its Series F in May valued the company at $22 billion. A year earlier, its Series D in October 2025 valued it at $5 billion.
On the same day, Predict.fun used a two-hour presale window to put a fully diluted valuation of about $1.64 billion on its token, less than one twenty-fourth of Kalshi’s valuation.
Sequoia’s fourth follow-on bet
For Sequoia, this was not a new position. It was another follow-on investment.
In February 2021, Sequoia led Kalshi’s $30 million Series A at a $145 million valuation. It then added to the position in the June 2025 Series C at $2 billion, the October 2025 Series D at $5 billion, which it co-led with a16z, and the May 2026 Series F at $22 billion. This latest round was the first time Sequoia appeared as a co-lead in one of Kalshi’s very late-stage financings.
The valuation curve has risen faster than the fundraising cadence. The article lists a progression from $2 billion in June 2025 to $11 billion in December 2025, $22 billion in May 2026 and $40 billion in October 2026.
Secondary markets had already started pricing that move. According to Forge Global, Kalshi’s Forge Price on Oct. 1 was $970.53, implying a $36.4 billion valuation. A year earlier, that price was $44.96.
Revenue growth is one of the figures behind the valuation. The Information reported that World Cup trading pushed Kalshi’s annualized revenue to more than $4 billion, double the level from two months earlier. Research firm InGame, using Kalshi’s public fee-rate formula, estimated that the company had collected about $2.04 billion in fees in 2026 through Oct. 6, versus about $263.5 million for all of 2025.
On volume, Kalshi reached an annualized $178 billion in May. In July, the World Cup alone brought $27 billion in monthly trading volume and 3 million new users.
Many observers have treated this round as the last private financing before an IPO. Chief executive Tarek Mansour only said there had been discussions and gave no timetable. In a CNBC appearance in June, he said an IPO would not come before 2027.
From prediction markets to a broader exchange model
More revealing than the size of the round was how Kalshi described itself in the announcement.
"Prediction markets are just the beginning," the company wrote in a blog post, adding that its goal is to build a broad financial exchange.
That shift is already visible in the product lineup. In 2026, after receiving approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, Kalshi entered perpetual futures. It started with crypto perpetuals, then expanded into stock indexes and metals, and later launched gold and silver perpetual contracts as its first non-prediction-market product, becoming the first exchange in the U.S. to list that category.
The new funding will be used for leveraged trading, single-stock perpetual futures and contract markets built around AI compute as a tradable commodity.
The route points directly at CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange. A company that began with contracts tied to questions such as who would win the Super Bowl is now trying to look more like a futures exchange.
The clearing layer is moving in the same direction. Kalshi Klear, the company’s in-house clearinghouse, has been approved and will replace MIAXdx. The setup is meant to support faster listings and settlement, while offering 3.75% annualized interest on positions.
Institutional business is expanding too. Kalshi said in September that it had established relationships with 500 institutional entities. Excluding market makers, institutions accounted for 25% of total trading volume. Its shareholder list now includes names such as Wellington Management, Morgan Stanley Investment Management and Baillie Gifford, firms not commonly associated with an event-contract company.
Its international push is moving at the same time. After the October 2025 Series D, Kalshi opened access to more than 140 countries, reached data partnerships with CNN and CNBC, and said publicly that it wanted to find "the local Robinhood" in every major market.
Legal pressure remains
The expansion has not come without setbacks.
Two federal appeals courts have ruled that states have authority to regulate sports-related event contracts, while a third appeals court has reached the opposite conclusion. This week, Utah’s attorney general filed criminal charges against Kalshi and two executives, accusing them of illegally promoting online gambling. In August, New York filed a lawsuit seeking $36 billion in damages and asking for the platform to be shut down.
That leaves a company valued at $40 billion with a core product still operating in the gap between state and federal jurisdiction in the U.S.
A duopoly with Polymarket
The article argues that a Kalshi-Polymarket duopoly has largely taken shape.
In the second quarter of 2026, global prediction market notional volume reached $111 billion, up 1764% year over year and above the combined full-year totals of 2024 and 2025. Kalshi accounted for about 63% and Polymarket about 28%, putting the two together above 90%. By August, Kalshi’s global share had risen to about 60%, versus 35% in 2025.
Polymarket, by contrast, is dealing with a different set of problems. It is raising a round led by 1789 Capital at a $21 billion post-money valuation. That is more than double the $9 billion valuation attached to ICE’s investment in 2025, but still only about half of Kalshi’s.
After acquiring CFTC-licensed exchange QCEX, Polymarket found that its existing software could not handle the trading load, leaving its U.S. platform close to a rebuild. The CFTC has opened a new investigation, and the National Futures Association, or NFA, had previously threatened to terminate its membership over recordkeeping issues.
Management has also been under pressure. Chief executive Shayne Coplan was reported to have used company funds to pay for private jet travel and apartment rent. Investors pushed for changes and the appointment of a chief financial officer. The company did not hire its first CFO until September this year.
Distributors are becoming rivals
Distribution partners are turning into competitors.
Robinhood was once Kalshi’s most important channel. In the second quarter of 2025, more than half of Kalshi’s trading volume was routed through Robinhood. In November, Robinhood and Susquehanna formed a joint venture, acquired MIAXdx and renamed it Rothera, building their own CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse. Its prediction market customer count has passed 1 million, annualized first-quarter revenue reached $415 million, and World Cup match-result and championship contracts were moved to Rothera during the tournament.
Coinbase has offered contracts through its partnership with Kalshi, and annualized revenue topped $100 million within two months of launch. Gemini and Crypto.com have also entered the segment by layering prediction products onto broader trading offerings.
On-chain competition has been limited so far. Hyperliquid launched an on-chain prediction market in May but has captured only 0.3% of trading volume to date. The article’s view is that liquidity-network barriers are higher in prediction markets than in DeFi.
Traditional betting operators and large technology companies are moving in as well. DraftKings and FanDuel each plan to spend $200 million to $300 million in 2026 to build prediction market apps. Meta has announced a standalone prediction market app under the codename Arena. Industry data cited in the article says there are now more than 125 active prediction market platforms, up from 15 in 2020.
Predict.fun and the token route
On the same day Kalshi announced its financing, Predict.fun opened a Pre-TGE Prime Sale in Binance Wallet. The window ran from 08:00 to 10:00 UTC, lasted two hours and required Binance Alpha points for eligibility.
Its native token, PREDICT, has a fixed total supply of 1 billion. At the token generation event, or TGE, 16% will unlock. The pre-market price was $14.52, implying a fully diluted valuation of about $1.64 billion. The project was founded by PancakeSwap co-founder dingaling, is built on BNB Chain and pitches itself as a yield-bearing prediction market in which users trade YES and NO shares with USDT while the underlying collateral also generates yield. It had previously received backing from YZi Labs.
The article says the token design itself is not crude. It points to a five-year vesting schedule, a full lock at TGE for early backers and lock-up options for the airdrop.
The issue, in the article’s framing, is timing. On one side is a company that spent five years building toward CFTC licensing, an in-house clearinghouse, 500 institutional clients and a $40 billion valuation. On the other is a platform whose product is still not fully formed, handing price discovery to the market in a two-hour sale window.
That contrast is presented as two different clocks for the same sector. Kalshi has taken a slower, heavier route built on licenses, institutional relationships and capital markets execution, then used a global liquidity pool and a broader derivatives lineup to deepen its moat. Predict.fun represents a lighter, faster and more tokenized route, using token economics and exchange listings to gather community and liquidity quickly, but with value support leaning far more on secondary-market expectations and operating outside the same regulatory structure.
The article’s conclusion is that the market has already shown its preference through a 24-fold valuation gap.
