Chavdar Vasilev is a journalist covering the casino and sports betting market sectors for CasinoBeats. He joined CasinoBeats in May 2025 and reports on industry-shaping stories across the US and beyond, including legislative debates, market...
Read Full BioKalshi has reached a $5 billion valuation after closing a $300 million Series D round, marking its largest funding round to date and paving the way for a significant international expansion. The company announced it will now operate in over 140 countries through a single global liquidity pool. Kalshi says the move will result in “deepening liquidity and price discovery across every market.”
The round, which Kalshi said was “massively oversubscribed,” was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Sequoia Capital, with “significant participation” from Paradigm. Other participants included Coinbase Ventures, General Catalyst, Spark Capital, and CapitalG.
The valuation more than doubles the company’s reported $2 billion mark from its previous raise in June 2025.
One Global Pool, 140 Markets
Kalshi’s expansion enables participants from over 140 countries to trade in the same markets. This effectively creates a unified liquidity pool, rather than region-based markets like those of other competitors.
The company claims that this will increase efficiency, depth, and price discovery for event-based contracts. These contracts range from elections and inflation to sports and policy outcomes.
Kalshi claims its user base has grown 20 times in a year, while trading volume has increased 200 times. The weekly volume now exceeds $1 billion, with an annualized run rate of approximately $50 billion.
The company also claims it now accounts for over 60% of the global prediction market activity, even before it expanded outside the US. The expansion excludes 38 jurisdictions, including the UK, Canada, and Singapore, due to local restrictions.
The funding also came just days after rival prediction platform Polymarket received a significant investment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. The $2 billion investment valued Polymarket at around $8 billion.
The back-to-back deals underscored growing institutional interest in event-driven trading and invited comparisons between Kalshi’s federally regulated structure and Polymarket’s decentralized model.
Kalshi Also Rolls Out NFL Player Props
Kalshi’s explosive growth over the past year is primarily driven by sports markets, which the platform continues to expand.
Just days before the funding announcement, Kalshi launched NFL player prop contracts. The move was expected following its self-certification in September. These contracts enable users to trade on outcomes, such as passing yards, touchdowns, or rushing yards, for individual players.
Kalshi’s venture into player-specific markets places it in more direct competition with regulated sportsbooks like DraftKings and FanDuel. Shares of both DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment (FanDuel’s parent company) dipped after Kalshi’s funding announcement. While investors weighed whether prediction markets could draw sportsbook customers away, analysts described their reaction as short-term.
Still, the stock declines reflect the increased uncertainty about the competitive boundaries between financial and gambling markets.
Legal Battles Amid Expansion
Kalshi’s expansion comes as the company faces mounting legal pressure at home. Earlier this month, it filed a lawsuit against the Ohio Casino Control Commission and the Ohio Attorney General. It challenged a cease-and-desist order that accused the platform of operating an unlicensed sports betting service.
The Ohio lawsuit follows similar actions against regulators in New Jersey, Maryland, Nevada, and Massachusetts. In all these cases, Kalshi argues that its event contracts are federally regulated financial instruments, not gambling products. Therefore, it says that it preempts state oversight.
State regulators are not the only ones targeting Kalshi. On October 8, a South Carolina lawsuit initially seeking to recover gambling losses from users on the platforms based on the Statute of Anne (a 1710 British Law), moved to federal court.
Native American tribes have also targeted the platform. In California, tribes that sued Kalshi for violation of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) have asked a federal court to issue a preliminary injunction against Kalshi, blocking sports prediction markets on Indian lands.
Elsewhere, a coalition of nine tribal organizations and 60 individual tribes filed an amicus curiae brief in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in support of New Jersey’s regulator. They argue that Kalshi’s event contracts undermine tribal sovereignty and compact-based exclusivity.
Additionally, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which oversees Kalshi at the federal level, recently stated that prediction markets may need to limit their availability as states challenge the legality of the event contracts.
Legal analysts see the court disputes as a test of whether prediction-market contracts can coexist with state gambling regimes.
The Broader Implication
The Kalshi (and previously Polymarket) funding and expansion underscore how prediction markets are transitioning to a serious financial frontier.
The company’s $5 billion valuation and new global footprint showcase that institutional investors are increasingly viewing event trading as a legitimate asset class, rather than a regulatory gray area.
Still, Kalshi’s rise also exposes its vulnerability. With each new market and product rollout, the debate intensifies over whether its model represents financial instruments or unlicensed gambling.
For now, the company and investors are betting that its federally regulated structure will prevail.
