Online prediction markets have jumped into the mainstream, as users flock to sites to bet on politics, sports, the next pope and more. That growth has drawn interest from investors.
Kalshi, one of the most prominent prediction markets, plans to announce on Friday that it has raised more than $300 million in a new round of financing at a valuation of $5 billion. The company also plans to disclose that it will start letting customers in more than 140 countries place bets on its website.
The fund-raising announcement, in the same week that Polymarket, Kalshi’s chief rival, said that the parent of the New York Stock Exchange would invest up to $2 billion, underscores how big a business prediction markets have become.
Kalshi is on track for $50 billion in trading volume on an annualized basis, a big jump from the roughly $300 million in annualized volume it recorded last year.
Last month, Kalshi overtook Polymarket to become the biggest player in the prediction-market industry, with a global market share of prediction-market activity of more than 60 percent, according to the data provider Dune.
“We have not expected this level of growth,” Tarek Mansour, a Kalshi co-founder and its chief executive, said in an interview.
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The post Kalshi, a Prediction Market, Raises Funds and Expands Overseas appeared first on New York Times.
