Kalshi announced last week that it had completed a Series D funding round exceeding $300m, valuing the company at $5bn.
The round was led by Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with returning participation from Paradigm and additional backing from CapitalG, Coinbase Ventures, General Catalyst, and Spark Capital.
a16z Growth Fund partner Alex Immerman said: “Kalshi has emerged as the leading prediction market platform… [and] has the opportunity to capture what may become the largest and most important financial market.”
The raise, finalised in August, values the business at $5bn and provides evidence of investor confidence in the platform’s rapid global expansion and growing role in financial markets.
Kalshi has simultaneously launched international operations, making its markets accessible to users in over 140 countries.
The company said this expansion creates the first unified global prediction market, allowing international users to trade on real-world events under the same structure as American participants.
The move is seen as a significant milestone for the industry, widening Kalshi’s potential customer base by billions while maintaining a single, consistent trading framework.
The company’s momentum has been reflected in its trading activity, with total platform volume surpassing $1bn in September, and annualised trading volume now exceeding $50bn.
In a sign of its rapid growth, the company also reported that it handled over $1bn in trades in the single week ended 6 October.
In September, Kalshi captured the majority share of global prediction market activity, a sharp rise from just 2% a year earlier.
This is seen as evidence of its accelerating traction among both retail and institutional users.
Laser-focused growth plans
Kalshi’s leadership, co-founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, have pursued a regulatory-first approach by securing approval from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
That distinction, while slowing its early growth compared to unregulated rivals, has provided long-term credibility and regulatory resilience.
Investors describe the strategy as a pragmatic decision that positions the company for institutional adoption and large-scale liquidity in the future.
According to Citizens analyst Jordan Bender, Kalshi’s Week 6 NFL pricing achieved its most competitive levels of the season, with implied pricing of 4.26% versus DraftKings’ 4.45% and FanDuel’s 4.41%.
The findings suggest Kalshi is narrowing the gap with traditional sportsbooks, driven by a fee structure designed to incentivise high-volume traders and institutional liquidity providers.
The firm’s transaction fee, as highlighted by Bender, averaged $1.61 per 100 contracts in Week 6, down from $1.64 the previous week, signalling improving efficiency as volume scales.
While analysts note that prediction exchanges are unlikely to pose a material threat to established sports betting operators, Kalshi’s rapid growth demonstrates the ballooning interest in the sector.
