Kalshi secured $300 million in Series D funding at a $5 billion valuation, tripling its worth since June, and is now expanding its prediction market platform to over 140 countries.
Kalshi, a fintech platform that facilitates the trading of “event contracts,” recently announced it was expanding its prediction markets to more than 140 countries after successfully raising $300 million in a Series D funding round.
The firm’s CEO, Tarek Mansour, said in a post on X that the Series D was led by Sequoia and a16z, with participation from Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, General Catalyst, CapitalG, Spark, Kevin Hart, Kevin Durant, Rich Kleiman, Mantis, and Kevin Yorn.
The round led by Sequoia and a16z received participation from Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, General Catalyst, CapitalG, Spark, Kevin Hart, Kevin Durant, Rich Kleiman, Mantis, and Kevin Yorn.
Back to work.
— Tarek Mansour (@mansourtarek_) October 10, 2025
A New Era for Prediction Markets
According to a press release, Kalshi was valued at $5 billion during its “massively oversubscribed” Series D. This puts its value up approximately $3 billion since its Series C in June.
The firm also says its trading volume has grown 200X in the last year and its user base has ballooned by 20X. “Kalshi now accounts for over 60 percent of global prediction-market activity,” it says, despite previously operating solely in the US.
Kalshi appears to have weathered a stormy regulatory environment after a tumultuous back-and-forth with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) throughout much of 2024.
As Coinspeaker reported in September 2024, the CFTC chair at the time, Rostin Behnam, sought to ban event contracts on sensitive issues such as gaming, terrorism, and assassination. Behnam was particularly concerned over risks related to the CFTC overseeing election-related contracts.
Behnam left the CFTC in January 2025 as the Trump administration settled in. He was replaced by current acting CFTC chair Caroline Pham. In February, Trump nominated former a16z policy head Brian Quintenz for the role of CFTC chair. That nomination was withdrawn in September, however, amid a political dustup involving Tyler Winklevoss.
Josh Sterling, a Milbank lawyer that currently represents Kalshi, has been named as a potential candidate to replace Quintenz. According to a recent report from Semafor, the White House is currently vetting Sterling, who was a senior Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) official prior to joining the law firm at Milbank, for the chair position.
Meanwhile, The Hill reported on Oct. 8 that Michael Selig, chief counsel for the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, has become the frontrunner in the race.
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