Kalshi CEO Confirms IPO Talk as Valuation Reportedly Jumps to $40bn

Kalshi chief executive Tarek Mansour confirmed on CNBC that the largest US prediction market is considering an initial public offering, the firmest statement yet from the company on a listing it has so far let others speculate about. He ruled out a 2026 sale and gave no firm timeline. The on-record comment landed the same week the Financial Times reported Kalshi is raising fresh capital at a roughly $40 billion valuation, a figure that would nearly double the $22 billion mark the company set only three months earlier. Our earlier report covered informal IPO talks for late 2027 and the $22bn Series F. What is new here is the escalation: the CEO is now on record, and the price tag has reportedly jumped again in weeks, not quarters.

"A company of our financial profile with the rate of growth that we're seeing, that sort of conversation has to happen," Mansour told CNBC on 24 June. "People start asking that question. And we're basically thinking about it, but obviously, we don't have an answer yet." He said the company is having early internal conversations and that a public debut will not come this year, comments consistent with reporting that points to a 2027 or 2028 window. The interview came just five days after sources told The Information that Kalshi was talking to investment banks about managing a future offering and wanting those banks to integrate the exchange into their client platforms, turning the listing process itself into a distribution channel for professional traders.

A valuation moving faster than the IPO

The $40 billion figure, attributed by CoinDesk to a Financial Times report citing people familiar with the talks, could close as soon as the third quarter of 2026. The FT named no new lead investor, listing only the existing backers from the March round: Coatue Management, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Morgan Stanley. If the raise prices at $40 billion, Kalshi's valuation will have climbed roughly 20 times in about a year, and the company would sit just outside the global top 15 unicorns, within reach of Canva at $42 billion and Prometheus at $41 billion.

The repricing is steep but not without precedent at this company. Each prior step roughly doubled the last.

A confirmed listing does not automatically follow a higher private mark. Companies are staying private longer: excluding Anthropic and OpenAI, Crunchbase counts six unicorns valued at $101 billion or more and another five between $50 billion and $75 billion, none rushing to file. Kalshi, founded in 2018, has no structural reason to move early. A raise at $40 billion would in fact reduce the pressure to list, since it secures growth capital without the disclosure and lock-up costs of a public debut.

What the growth numbers actually show

The case for the valuation rests on volume, and the volume is real. Kalshi crossed $100 billion in cumulative notional trading volume in mid-June and logged its strongest week on record at $6.38 billion, driven by the 2026 World Cup. Aggregate open interest broke $1.16 billion for the first time, up about 350% year to date. Monthly volume has passed $17 billion, against under $5 billion a year earlier, and annualized volume reached $178 billion in May. Sports now drives roughly 60% to 65% of the total: Kalshi's sports markets traded $10.44 billion in May alone, about 60 times its election volume, and the company has taken more than $300 million on World Cup contracts during the tournament.

That sports concentration is the dependency worth watching for affiliates and B2B partners. The same court fight that lets Kalshi argue federal commodities law preempts state gambling enforcement is unresolved. A chunk of the lawsuits, including the Kentucky attorney general's suit against Kalshi, Polymarket and VGW, targets exactly the sports contracts now generating most of the volume. A valuation built on a revenue base that a single adverse ruling could compress is a different risk profile than one built on diversified financial-event markets. Partners routing traffic into prediction products are leveraged to a regulatory question that the CFTC and the courts have not closed.

The rival comparison sharpens the point rather than softening it. Here is how the two leaders line up on the figures that would frame any listing.

At a reported $40 billion against Polymarket's roughly $15 billion, the gap between the two is the widest it has been. ICE completed a $2 billion commitment to Polymarket in March at a pre-investment valuation near $8 billion, but that deal was structured around data: ICE pipes Polymarket's probability feeds into its Consolidated Feed for institutional clients rather than betting on the exchange's own equity multiple. Kalshi's path is the inverse, raising direct equity capital toward a standalone listing that would be the first clean public proxy for the sector. No pure-play prediction-market stock trades today. Coinbase, DraftKings, Flutter and Robinhood all touch the space, which is why some investors expect outsized retail demand whenever a Kalshi listing arrives.

The next markers are concrete: whether the $40 billion round actually prices and closes in the third quarter, whether a formal bank mandate appears, and whether US courts settle the sports question before Kalshi files. Mansour put a number on the only part he would commit to. No IPO in 2026.