Kalshi is worth $22 billion on paper and its annualized revenue just hit $2 billion, up threefold since November. The eight-year-old prediction markets platform is now in early-stage IPO talks with investment banks, The Information reported Thursday.
That valuation is already stale on the upside. When Kalshi raised $1 billion at $22 billion in May, it had doubled from the $11 billion it commanded five months earlier. Revenue at that raise exceeded $1.5 billion annualized. It’s already $500 million higher.
NBA and World Cup trading drove the spike. Annualized trading volume tripled over six months, from $52 billion to $178 billion, and institutional volume rose 800% in the same period.
What does a future public-market buyer actually get? The dominant platform in U.S. prediction markets: Kalshi holds over 90% of domestic activity, betting that event contracts graduate from a sports-and-politics niche to a mainstream financial product. Bernstein pegged sector volume at $1 trillion by 2030, up from $51 billion last year.
At $22 billion on $2 billion of annualized revenue, that’s an 11x multiple. Sustaining it means the platform can’t stay a sports-and-elections product. It needs the hedge funds, asset managers, and broker integrations it’s actively courting. Monday’s announcement of an AI agent for contract management is Kalshi’s proof-of-concept that it’s building the operational layer a scaled financial exchange requires.
Kalshi declined to comment. The IPO isn’t happening before late 2027 at the earliest.
— Diana Kowalski