Kalshi

Kalshi Inc. runs a federally regulated exchange for event contracts — binary instruments that pay $1 if a stated outcome occurs and nothing if it does not. The company was founded in 2018 by Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, who met as students at MIT, and it is headquartered at 594 Broadway in New York. Its defining asset is regulatory rather than technical: in November 2020 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission designated Kalshi a contract market, making it the first exchange licensed by a US financial regulator to list contracts directly on the outcome of events. The public platform launched in July 2021.

The business turned on two decisions. The first was litigation: after the CFTC blocked Kalshi's contracts on control of Congress, the company sued, and in 2024 the DC District Court ruled the agency had exceeded its authority, restoring election markets in the United States for the first time in a century. The second was sport. Sports contracts now dominate the exchange — Wikipedia records $263.5 million of 2025 revenue, of which 89% came from sports — and are distributed through partners including Robinhood as well as through Kalshi's own app.

Growth since has been steep. Kalshi said annualised trading volume rose from roughly $52 billion to $178 billion in the six months to May 2026, and that institutional trading was up 800% over the same period. Annualised revenue reached about $2 billion by June 2026, when chief executive Tarek Mansour told CNBC that the company would not list this year. Private valuation followed the volume: $2 billion in June 2025, $5 billion in October 2025, $11 billion in December 2025 and $22 billion in May 2026.

The product line has widened beyond outcome contracts. Kalshi has filed with the CFTC to list perpetual futures — contracts with no expiry — tied to gold, silver and platinum, having already launched crypto-linked perpetuals, and its chief risk officer has described discussions with the regulator on energy contracts as advanced. Kalshi has also opened a Washington office and built out a government-relations function.

The offsetting risk is legal, and it is not small. Kalshi is defending gambling-law actions brought by attorneys general in states including Massachusetts, Michigan, Washington, Wisconsin and New York — the New York suit seeks roughly $36 billion in penalties and user compensation — as well as suits from Californian and Wisconsin tribes. The CFTC has in turn sued several states asserting exclusive federal jurisdiction. Rulings so far have gone both ways, and the question of whether federal designation pre-empts state gambling law sits directly beneath the revenue.