News linked to both this project and an event.
Prediction market platform Kalshi has launched the Midterms Hub to display real-time market odds for U.S. Senate and House races. The page integrates real-time trading prices, polling averages, Federal Election Commission fundraising data, and curated news. Kalshi is also seeking regulatory approval to expand perpetual futures trading beyond cryptocurrencies and is pursuing new funding at a valuation of approximately $40 billion.
: U.S. prediction market platform Kalshi experienced explosive growth during the 2026 World Cup, with platform trading volume soaring from $6.67 billion on June 22 to $24.2 billion on July 14. The single "World Cup Champion" prediction market saw trading volume exceed $1.2 billion. Kalshi stated that its growth reflects a new trend in the AI era: as the volume of AI-generated content increases substantially, authentic, real-time, and non-replicable human interaction scenarios are becoming scarcer, positioning prediction markets as a novel tool for observing public sentiment and collective judgment.Meanwhile, Kalshi is seeking to transform from a sports prediction platform into the next-generation financial trading infrastructure. The company currently holds Designated Contract Market (DCM) status recognized by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and plans to expand into more prediction areas including sports, geopolitics, culture, and economics. (Fortune)
: Prediction market platform Pascal has announced the completion of a $9 million Series A funding round. The platform aims to create a next-generation prediction market platform for professional traders and institutional users, challenging the current market landscape dominated by Kalshi and Polymarket.This funding round was led by Union Square Ventures (USV), with the specific valuation not disclosed. This financing expands on a $6 million seed round from August last year, with early investors including Wintermute Ventures and DBA.Headquartered in New York, Pascal positions itself as a prediction market platform similar to Kalshi, but aims to offer users lower fees, higher liquidity, and more specialized trading tools through a trading model closer to perpetual futures.Pascal co-founder Ivo Crnkovic-Rubsamen stated that the hope is to establish highly liquid prediction markets for real business risks in the future, allowing companies to utilize these markets for risk management and hedging. (Fortune)
prediction market platform Kalshi is in talks to raise a new round of funding at a valuation of approximately $40 billion, with a potential deal closing as early as the third quarter. Last month, Kalshi completed a $1 billion funding round from investors including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, and Morgan Stanley, at a valuation of $22 billion.Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour stated that the company is considering an IPO, but it will not go public in 2026, with a potential listing likely no earlier than late 2027 or 2028. Kalshi reported that as of April 2026, its annualized trading volume reached $178 billion, a 32-fold increase year-over-year.Kalshi is currently embroiled in a legal dispute between U.S. state and federal regulators over the oversight of prediction markets. The controversy includes whether sports event contracts constitute derivatives regulated by the CFTC or illegal gambling. CME has sued the CFTC over its approval of Kalshi's "perpetual" futures, Kentucky sued Kalshi and Polymarket this month, and the CFTC subsequently sued Kentucky to block its enforcement action. (Decrypt)
according to sources familiar with the matter, prediction market platform Kalshi is seeking to raise new funds at a valuation of approximately $40 billion, nearly double its previous fundraising target of $22 billion.The fundraising could be completed as early as the third quarter of this year. If the deal is successful, Kalshi will expand its valuation lead over competitor Polymarket, which was previously reported to be seeking funding at a valuation of $15 billion.Previously, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour stated in an interview with CNBC that the company is considering an eventual initial public offering, but it will not happen before 2027. (Coindesk)
According to the UK’s Financial Times, prediction market platform Kalshi is in talks for a new funding round valuing the company at approximately $4 billion, potentially closing as early as Q3 this year. Last month, Kalshi raised $1 billion at a $2.2 billion valuation, with investors including Coatue, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Morgan Stanley.
John Wang, Head of Crypto Business at prediction market platform Kalshi, stated on X that it is widely believed Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was a "top-tier venture capitalist" who successfully invested in star projects like Anthropic and Cursor. However, Wang argued this narrative is inaccurate. The real "core figure" driving these investment strategies and early resource allocation was actually "AI stock guru" Leopold Aschenbrenner, not SBF himself.Analysis suggests that this remark has sparked discussion within the crypto and venture capital circles, once again bringing the attribution of SBF's influence on early-stage investments in Silicon Valley and the crypto industry into the spotlight. It is reported that the AI fund Situational Awareness, founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, has grown to over $20 billion in scale, with quantitative giant Jane Street making a rare capital injection. Situational Awareness has achieved a year-to-date return rate of 270% and cumulative returns exceeding 1,000% since its inception. Equity bets on Anthropic have contributed the most successful returns, accounting for one-fifth of its assets. Beyond public markets, Situational Awareness also co-led an investment round in AI chip company MatX with Jane Street and participated in the latest funding round of AI cloud computing provider Fluidstack.
According to The Block, the number of monthly crypto venture capital deals in May 2026 dropped to approximately 50—the lowest level since before 2021. Both historically most active sectors—infrastructure and crypto financial services—fell to multi-year lows. A large-scale shift of investor attention toward the AI sector, coupled with a shortage of high-quality early-stage projects, are the primary drivers behind this decline in deal volume. Although the number of deals declined, total funding remained relatively high, exhibiting a “fewer deals, larger amounts” pattern—the recent $1 billion fundraising round by prediction market platform Kalshi being a prime example. Analysts note that the current low-noise environment actually presents a window of opportunity for projects with clear use cases and genuine traction. Whether a recovery emerges in the second half of 2026 will depend on whether new sectors beyond prediction markets and financial infrastructure can generate broad-based investment consensus at scale.
as anticipation builds for several potential major IPOs, "prediction market trading" centered around high-profile pre-IPO companies is rapidly heating up, with users betting on pre-IPO performance through prediction contracts.Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi have become primary channels, allowing users to engage in "yes/no" contract trading on key metrics such as valuation ranges and listing timelines. Prices are quoted in cents, settling at $1 if the outcome is correct.Given that ordinary investors cannot directly participate in equity investments in popular private companies like SpaceX and OpenAI before their IPOs, prediction markets are converting related expectations into tradeable, event-driven assets.Analysts believe that as the window for potential "mega IPOs" approaches, prediction markets are leveraging public sentiment and capital attention to turn IPO narratives into short-term volatility opportunities on both on-chain and compliant trading platforms, further expanding their influence in financial speculation and information pricing. (The Information)
According to Bloomberg, prediction market platform Kalshi Inc. has added two new institutional investors, raising an additional $200 million and bringing the total funding for this round to over $1.2 billion. The newly added investors are Layer Global, led by Anton Levy, and the prominent asset management firm Baillie Gifford—both of which are investing in Kalshi for the first time.
sources revealed prediction market platform Kalshi has raised an additional $200 million from Baillie Gifford and Layer Global, further expanding the $1 billion funding round previously led by Coatue Management, while maintaining a company valuation of $22 billion.Earlier this month, Kalshi announced the completion of a $1 billion Series F round, with participants including Sequoia Capital, a16z, IVP, Paradigm, Morgan Stanley, and ARK Invest.Data shows that Kalshi's monthly trading volume in April exceeded $14 billion, with annualized revenue surpassing $1.5 billion. (Bloomberg)
the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Department of Justice have filed a lawsuit against the state of Minnesota and Governor Tim Walz, opposing the state's newly signed ban on prediction markets.The new Minnesota law, set to take effect on August 1, prohibits users from engaging in prediction market trading related to outcomes in sports, weather, company valuations, and government events. In the lawsuit, the CFTC stated this is the first state-level law in the U.S. to explicitly impose a comprehensive ban on prediction markets.The CFTC and the Department of Justice argue that the relevant products fall under federally regulated derivatives and "swap" contracts, over which the CFTC holds exclusive regulatory authority, and that state governments are not permitted to classify them as illegal gambling or prohibit them.This lawsuit further escalates the jurisdictional conflict between federal regulators and state-level gambling oversight authorities. Previously, the CFTC had sued states such as Illinois, Arizona, and Connecticut to oppose their attempts to shut down prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket.
Cathie Wood posted on X platform, stating that ARK participated in Kalshi's latest funding round, believing that prediction markets are emerging as a new layer of financial infrastructure, enabling real-time price discovery around events, probabilities, and the evolving state of the world. Kalshi is at the forefront of this innovation, and ARK supports the team in pushing the boundaries of how information is aggregated and expressed through markets.
Odaily forecasts that the prediction market platform Kalshi has announced the completion of a new $1 billion funding round, led by Coatue Management, boosting the company's valuation to $22 billion. Kalshi is a prediction market platform that allows users to trade on the outcomes of events such as sports, politics, and weather. Following the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, the platform has seen significant user growth, gradually entering the mainstream financial market's spotlight.Data shows that Kalshi has approximately 2 million monthly active users, with an annualized trading volume reaching $178 billion. This volume has more than tripled over the past six months, resulting in an annualized revenue exceeding $1.5 billion.This funding round is also the third round of financing completed by Kalshi in the past seven months, with valuations nearly doubling each time. This reflects the continued warming of the prediction market track among institutional capital, albeit accompanied by regulatory lawsuits and controversies surrounding "insider trading." (The New York Times)
According to The Block, Jim Esposito, President of Citadel Securities, stated on Thursday at the Semafor World Economic Forum in Washington, D.C., that the firm is “fully capable” of providing liquidity to prediction markets—but explicitly expressed no interest in sports-event contracts. Instead, he emphasized the value of prediction markets for hedging geopolitical risks, citing the U.S. midterm elections this November as “one of the greatest risks facing investors’ portfolios.” Esposito noted that as platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket continue to grow rapidly, the prediction market is poised for sustained expansion—naturally drawing Citadel Securities into the space. Notably, Zhao Peng, CEO of Citadel Securities, participated last year in Kalshi’s $185 million funding round.