Kalshi Closes $1 Billion Series E as Trading Activity Accelerates

Kalshi has completed a $1 billion Series E round at an $11 billion valuation, confirming its previously announced financing. The round was led by Paradigm and included investors such as Anthos Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, ARK Invest, CapitalG, IVP, Meritech Capital, Sequoia, and Y Combinator. 

The seven-year-old company operates what it describes as the world's largest prediction market, allowing users to trade on real-world events as a financial asset class. It's what makes it one of the best prediction market apps.

"Kalshi is replacing debate, subjectivity, and talk with markets, accuracy, and truth," said Tarek Mansour, CEO of Kalshi. “We have created a new way of consuming and engaging with information. It’s hard to have an opinion about the future today without thinking about Kalshi.”

Kalshi noted that weekly trading volumes were over $1 billion, more than 1,000% higher than in 2024. The platform now has more than 3,500 markets and gets millions of users every week, from retail traders to professionals in politics and finance. 

The company plans to use the new funds to increase the adoption of its products, expand brokerage integrations, and introduce additional products to its lineup. It also wants to make more partnerships with media and data companies.  

"Kalshi's exponential growth shows the scale of latent demand for prediction markets as a new asset class—from institutions to everyday people,” said Matt Huang, co-founder and managing partner at Paradigm. "People come for one type of market and stay for the breadth. We see this as an uncapped cultural and economic phenomenon, similar to how we felt about crypto a decade ago.”

Trading volume surges

On top of reporting a $1 billion funding round, the prediction market platform and rival Polymarket generated a combined $10 billion in trading volume for November, according to data posted by The Block. 

Kalshi had its most successful month to date, producing $5.8 billion in trading volume, an increase of 32% compared to the previous month’s figure of $4.4 billion. In comparison, Polymarket generated $3.7 billion, a 23.8% rise from October, which generated $3.02 billion. 

Since the Summer, trading volumes on both platforms have continued to surge, extending record-setting activity. This growth has also been fueled by rising interest in prediction markets, with Kalshi and Polymarket establishing a duopoly. 

Kalshi has just completed its most recent Series funding round, which saw investors collectively raise $1 billion. On the other hand, Polymarket is poised for its US return after receiving regulatory approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in November. 

Both platforms have also increased partnerships, with Polymarket becoming a major distribution partner to Yahoo Finance, the UFC, and Google. Kalshi has also become the official data partner for CNN, with its prediction markets set to be televised during broadcasts