Kalshi Officially Confirms $1B Raise at $22B Valuation

Prediction market platform Kalshi has officially confirmed it raised $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation, with co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour announcing the news on X today, May 7. The round was led by Coatue, with participation from Morgan Stanley, Sequoia, and a16z, among others.

The announcement comes nearly two months after the Wall Street Journal first reported on details of the raise. As The Defiant reported at the time, Kalshi’s updated valuation at $22 billion is double that of its previous raise in November.

Mansour framed the milestone as an inflection point for prediction market sector, emphasizing a rapid shift from retail-driven activity toward institutional participation. Hedge funds, asset managers, prop firms, and insurers are now actively trading, providing liquidity, and hedging real-world risk on the platform, according to the founder’s X post.

“Prediction markets are moving from early adoption to core financial infrastructure,” Mansour wrote, adding that the new capital will be used to accelerate that institutional adoption and unlock trillions in capital for active trading and risk management.

The confirmation also puts Kalshi’s valuation well ahead of rival Polymarket’s most recently reported one. Reuters reported last month that the on-chain prediction market platform was in talks to raise at a $15 billion valuation.

Since last fall, Kalshi has consistently posted higher monthly volumes than Polymarket, totaling $73.5 billion in the past year, compared to Polymarket’s $54.5 billion, according to Token Terminal data.

The Defiant has tracked the sector’s rapid evolution closely — from Kalshi and Polymarket both moving into perpetual futures trading and Google Finance integrating live prediction market data, to the CFTC launching a sweeping regulatory review of the space earlier this year.

This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.