Kalshi has raised USD 1 billion in a funding round co-led by Sequoia and Wellington, valuing the US-based company at USD 40 billion.
Alongside co-leads Sequoia and Wellington, Tiger Global Management and Dragoneer Investment Group also participated, according to a source familiar with the matter. The company plans to move beyond the event contracts on sports and elections that built its business and develop a multi-asset trading platform. That strategy puts Kalshi in more direct competition with exchange operators such as CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange.
The new round comes just over five months after Kalshi raised another USD 1 billion in a round led by Coatue, which valued the company at USD 22 billion. Its valuation has therefore increased by nearly 82% in that period. Together, the two rounds have brought USD 2 billion of new capital into the company within roughly half a year.
From event contracts to perpetual futures
The product expansion is already underway. In 2026, Kalshi began offering perpetual futures after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) approved the products. It first listed cryptocurrency perpetuals and later extended the offering to equity indexes and metals.
Perpetual contracts, or ‘perps’, never mature. A trader can therefore keep a position open for as long as they choose, with no need to replace it with a new contract at expiry. Because perps may be traded with substantial leverage, both profits and losses can be amplified. With these products, Kalshi’s offering moves closer to the instruments typically found on derivatives exchanges and further from the event contracts on which its business was founded.
Legal scrutiny and competitive position
The funding arrives during a period of legal and public scrutiny for the prediction-market sector. Critics of platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket argue that the products resemble gambling and could encourage addictive behaviour. Recently, in October 2026, Utah’s attorney general brought criminal charges against Kalshi and two of its senior executives, alleging that the company illegally promoted online gambling.
Prediction-market platforms have gained prominence since the last US presidential election. According to Dune Analytics data, Kalshi has overtaken Polymarket in market share over the past year. Polymarket, meanwhile, has faced delays in launching its US platform and is the subject of a CFTC probe.
