Kalshi in talks to raise at a $65B valuation, weeks after its $40B round

What's the deal? Kalshi, the US prediction-market exchange, is in talks with investors to raise new capital at a $65 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported on 12 November, citing people familiar with the matter. The amount being raised has not been disclosed, and Kalshi declined to comment. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters the money would go towards building a new platform for trading compute futures.

Why it matters: The talks come only weeks after Kalshi finalised a $1 billion round at a $40 billion valuation, co-led by Sequoia and Wellington, which had been expected to be its last private raise before an IPO. That round itself followed a $1 billion Coatue-led round at $22 billion in May. Kalshi's annual revenue run rate recently passed $5 billion, according to Bloomberg, and its monthly trading volume by contract value rose from about $40 billion in August to nearly $100 billion in October.

Context: Kalshi has said it wants to move beyond event contracts into indices, single-stock perpetual futures and compute markets, putting it in closer competition with traditional exchanges such as CME, which is working with Silicon Data on compute futures. Separately, Kalshi ended its advisory contract with Donald Trump Jr. after his VC firm 1789 Capital increased its stake in rival Polymarket, Reuters reported.

Sources: Bloomberg
Reuters via CNA
Reuters

Image: Kalshi co-founder Tarek Mansour at Web Summit 2021. Photo: Diarmuid Greene/Web Summit, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons