Kalshi
- CFTC-regulated DCM that pioneered the modern US event-contract category.
- Its affiliate Kinetic Markets LLC registered as a Futures Commission Merchant with the NFA on March 24, 2026, the first FCM registration in the sector; a Kalshi Klear rulebook amendment effective April 27, 2026 then enabled margin trading for professional clients, letting them post a fraction of a contract's value as collateral instead of the prior fully-collateralized model.
- Series F raised $1B at a $22B valuation in May 2026 (Coatue led, Sequoia / a16z / Paradigm / Morgan Stanley / ARK participating); in discussions for a new round at ~$40B valuation as of June 24, 2026 (FT).
- Annualized volume $178B, revenue $2B (June 2026, up ~3x from Nov 2025).
- Launched crypto perpetual futures (April 2026), executed its first institutional block trade (Greenlight / Jump, May 2026), and joined NCPG with a $2M responsible-trading commitment (May 18).
- Entered Canada June 18, 2026 via Wealthsimple Predict (CIRO-authorized), offering ~4,000 contracts to Canadian investors — its first international broker-dealer partnership.
- CEO Tarek Mansour confirmed an IPO is under consideration; a listing is not expected before 2027.
- Talks with Meta about a possible acquisition broke down over valuation and regulatory-complexity concerns around late June 2026; Meta built its own play-money app (Arena) instead, though the two companies separately struck a deal to integrate Kalshi into Threads.
- Launched a free advanced trading terminal, Kalshi Pro, in public beta July 13, and filed to extend its perpetual-futures line into gold, silver, and platinum July 21.
- The CFTC settled manipulative-trading charges tied to its platform against former Rep. George Santos on July 31, 2026 (disgorgement, penalty, and a three-year trading ban), and the company now faces a privacy class action (July 9) alongside the multi-state litigation wave.
- On August 5, 2026, Kalshi signed an official data, marketing, and integrity-services partnership with Genius Sports covering real-time soccer data across the EPL, Serie A, Liga MX, Argentine Primera División, and Ligue 1 — the same arrangement Genius Sports already has with Polymarket.
Licensing
- Federally regulated DCM operating nationwide; aggressively litigating CEA preemption against state regulators (Third Circuit win, AZ federal PI, Tennessee TRO; losses in MD district court, 6th Cir. stay, WA remand).
- Filed its own private preemption suit against Illinois (N.D. Ill., June 24, 2026) alongside the CFTC's parallel action; SB 3019 took effect July 1 with the suit still pending.
- Raised $1B at a $22B valuation (May 2026); targeting ~$40B in a new round (June 2026).
- July brought the sharpest escalation yet in the multistate legal fight.
- A Washington state court issued a preliminary injunction (July 21, appealed to the 9th Circuit) finding Kalshi likely ran an illegal gambling operation.
- Kalshi settled with Nevada to geofence the state by August 12 under threat of $120,000/day fines (July 23).
- A Wisconsin federal court refused to shield Kalshi from state enforcement (July 29).
- Judge Torres delivered a second SDNY loss, and the Second Circuit denied a stay in the parallel NY Gaming Commission case (July 27-28).
- NY AG Letitia James filed a direct suit seeking roughly $36 billion (July 31).
- A 44-state AG coalition sent the CFTC a comment letter (July 28) arguing sports-wagering regulation is a state, not federal, function.
- Partial offsets: the CFTC used emergency authority to override a Michigan court order in Kalshi's favor (July 14), Kalshi won a case blocking Minnesota's statutory ban (July 27), and a new CFTC data-reporting NPRM (June 25) treats event contracts as a distinct, ongoing category rather than a target for elimination.
- Also named in the CFTC's new vertical-integration conflict-of-interest NPRM (July 30), which targets exchange/market-maker affiliations like Kalshi's own.
- On August 4, Judge Rakoff denied the CFTC/DOJ's TRO bid to halt New York's direct suit, finding no shown likelihood of success or irreparable harm; New York's $36 billion case against Kalshi may now proceed, though the CFTC can renew the request before Judge Marrero on August 7.
- That same week, Utah handed Kalshi its first final (non-preliminary) federal loss nationwide: on August 4, Judge Robert Shelby granted Utah summary judgment, rejecting Kalshi's CEA-preemption theories outright; Kalshi says it will appeal to the Tenth Circuit.
- Separately, eight Senate Democrats wrote the CFTC on August 3 pressing it to bar wildfire-outcome event contracts, a new and so-far low-materiality front distinct from the sports/election preemption fights.
Regulatory history
Recent activity
AI Insights
AI-generated analysis from broader market, trading, and industry-press signals — not a primary regulatory source and not legal advice.
- Aug 6, 2026app-retentionsportsbook-comparisonapptopia
Mobile-analytics firm Apptopia published a report on August 5 examining new-user retention across DraftKings Sportsbook, FanDuel Sportsbook, and Kalshi, framed around the question of whether Kalshi is pulling users away from incumbent sportsbooks and how usage compares between states where sports betting is legal versus illegal. The framing itself is telling: a third-party analytics shop is now treating Kalshi as a direct retention competitor to licensed sportsbooks rather than a separate financial-exchange category, which is exactly the characterization Kalshi's legal defense in cases like law-kalshi-v-utah is built to resist.
- Aug 4, 2026volumeworld-cupmarket-share
Combined Kalshi/Polymarket monthly volume hit a record $50.59B in July, per data published August 3, with Kalshi alone accounting for $37.7B, up 14% month-over-month and now roughly 74.5% of tracked combined volume. The World Cup drove much of the surge (Kalshi's Spain-Argentina final market alone traded $1.9B), but open interest across the tracked platforms nearly halved by month-end, from about $2B to $1.2B, once the tournament ended — a reminder that Kalshi's scale is still heavily event-driven rather than fully diversified.
- Aug 1, 2026distributionchrome-web-storeplatform-risk
Google's updated Chrome Web Store policy, published July 1 and enforced starting today, explicitly bars extensions that facilitate real-money transactions on predictive outcomes — putting the browser-extension cottage industry built around Kalshi and Polymarket trading at risk of removal. It is a quieter but broader-reach threat than any single state suit: a distribution-layer chokepoint neither company's federal DCM registration does anything to protect against.
- Jul 31, 2026volumerevenueipo
Kalshi's trailing 30-day volume hit roughly $40B by July 8, more than double the prior period, powered by World Cup markets (over $13.8B) and a parlay mix now near 38% of flow; Sacra estimates annualized revenue near $3.5B in June, up nearly 5x from December. With informal IPO conversations already underway per prior reporting, the growth curve increasingly reads as scale-driven exchange economics rather than a single-event spike.
Scoring is illustrative and based on public information. SiaPredict does not provide legal advice.