Kalshi, a U.S.-based prediction market, has raised $300 million in a Series D funding round that values the company at $5 billion. The firm is planning to expand its presence in global markets amid increased popularity of prediction markets.
As noted in a latest article from The New York Times, the funding round was led by Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from investors including Paradigm, CapitalG, Coinbase Ventures, and Spark Capital.
Kalshi mentioned that it plans to use the fund to open its platform to customers in over 140 countries, far beyond the U.S walls so that people around the world can trade on real-world events such as politics, sports, and global news.
Moreover, Kalshi is on pace to reach $50 billion in annualized trading volume and now holds more than 60% of the global prediction market. In September, Kalshi passed its main rival, Polymarket, in trading activity, recording almost double its competitor’s volume, according to data from Dune.
Sports Betting Pushes Kalshi Ahead
Initially, sports betting has also played a major role in Kalshi’s growth. The U.S. market, which is now worth $13.7 billion, has flourished since the Supreme Court legalized sports betting in 2018. Kalshi has managed to tap into this demand by offering sports-related contracts, including complex bets known as parlays. This has helped it attract new users and increase trading numbers.
Dustin Gouker, a sports betting consultant, said many Robinhood users now trade directly through Kalshi, showing how mainstream prediction markets have become.
Crypto and Global Expansion on the Horizon
Meanwhile, the company is also moving into cryptocurrency through a partnership with ZeroHash to let users deposit cryptocurrencies on the platform.
“The next 10x unlock for us will be building new financial primitives for trading on Kalshi. And crypto, as this global financial layer, is honestly essential to fulfilling that vision.” John Wang, Kalshi’s newly hired crypto lead, said at Solana APEX. Wang also encouraged developers to pitch ideas from pushing data onchain to tokenizing positions on Kalshi.
The platform has also had its own fair share of regulatory issues when it faced legal scrutiny over its sports-related contracts in some U.S. states. However, the CFTC has cleared its election-related offerings.
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