USDKalshi’s $1B Raise Pushes Valuation to $11B as Prediction-Market Race with Polymarket Escalates
Regulated Exchange Surges Ahead While Crypto-Native Rival Seeks U.S. Pathway
TL;DR
- Kalshi’s valuation rockets from $5B to $11B within weeks after a $1B round led by Sequoia and CapitalG, solidifying its position as the regulated leader in the prediction-market sector.
- Polymarket explores a new valuation range of $12B–$15B while working to regain U.S. access through a derivatives exchange acquisition after years of regulatory restrictions.
- Trading-volume metrics show Kalshi commanding roughly 62% of global prediction-market activity during several benchmark periods, with annualized volumes nearing $50B.
Kalshi’s aggressive climb in valuation reached a new peak on November 20, 2025, as TechCrunch revealed the platform had closed a massive $1 billion funding round that pushed its valuation to $11 billion. The seven-year-old MIT-founded prediction-market operator had already stunned the market earlier in October with a $300 million raise at a $5 billion valuation, making the new figure especially striking given that both rounds landed only weeks apart. Investors doubling down included Sequoia Capital and CapitalG, joined again by Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm, Anthos Capital and Neo, signaling a high-conviction bet that Kalshi’s regulated-exchange model is gaining durable traction across global markets.
Kalshi’s surge coincides with its reported annualized trading volume reaching $50 billion, a jump from roughly $300 million the year prior. The platform now counts users across more than 140 countries and offers an expanding catalog of real-world markets, ranging from U.S. electoral outcomes to cultural events like the Time Person of the Year selection or the opening-week Rotten Tomatoes score for the film Wicked. Those consumer-friendly markets sit alongside more institutional-style contracts tied to macroeconomic releases, allowing Kalshi to pursue a broad retail and professional user base. Kalshi’s leadership leaned into the momentum earlier this year, with CEO Tarek Mansour telling industry participants that the sector “is starting to look like a trillion-dollar market,” framing the speed of adoption as exceeding even the team’s optimistic internal projections.
Market-share data from CoinDesk highlights just how forcefully Kalshi’s model is resonating with traders. During the September 11–17, 2025 period, Kalshi logged more than $500 million in weekly trading volume alongside approximately $189 million in average open interest, giving it about 62% of the global prediction-market volume for that stretch. Analysts studying the ratio between open interest and volume found Kalshi’s turnover to be faster than its crypto-native competitors, echoing the platform’s positioning as a destination for shorter-horizon and event-driven traders. Monthly totals have pushed beyond $1 billion at times, reinforcing the view that regulated access in the U.S. gives Kalshi a more stable and expansive base of liquidity.
The competitive narrative is heavily shaped by Polymarket, which for years dominated the crypto-linked side of prediction markets before U.S. regulators forced it to block American users under a 2022 settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Polymarket has since pursued a path back into the U.S. by acquiring the derivatives exchange and clearinghouse QCX, an effort intended to build a compliant structure similar to Kalshi’s federally regulated framework. Sources cited by TechCrunch reported that Polymarket was simultaneously exploring a valuation range between $12 billion and $15 billion following an earlier round valuing the platform at $8 billion pre-money. The firm’s trajectory mirrors Kalshi’s in scale, although its regulatory constraints continue to shape its market composition and longer-duration positions.
Both companies represent distinct philosophies now competing for global leadership. Kalshi leans on regulatory approval as a moat, having successfully sued the CFTC last year to secure U.S. operating rights, while Polymarket pushes forward with its decentralized architecture and crypto-native user community. Kalshi’s expansion strategy also includes forging distribution partnerships with major broker apps and exploring integrations within the broader crypto ecosystem, a dual-market push aimed at building a unified liquidity pool across traditional finance and on-chain venues. Polymarket’s strategy focuses on leveraging the speed and expressiveness of blockchain-based markets while navigating the final stages of its U.S. compliance rebuild.
The speed of valuation growth for Kalshi—moving from $2 billion in June to $5 billion in October and then $11 billion in late November—has drawn attention from both supporters and skeptics. The acceleration suggests investor enthusiasm for prediction markets as a maturing asset class, though the sustainability of that pace will depend on the ongoing regulatory posture toward event-based trading, the emergence of new competitors and the evolution of U.S. policy on sports-adjacent or political markets. Yet the investment community continues to frame the sector as entering a breakout phase. Paradigm’s Matt Huang captured this sentiment earlier in the year, praising Kalshi’s position by saying, “There’s no better team than Kalshi to scale prediction markets and reshape how people think about everything from elections and economic markets to weather and sports.”
Across both platforms, the numbers reflect a rapidly expanding industry that is transitioning from fringe curiosity to mainstream financial instrument. Whether Kalshi’s regulatory edge proves durable or Polymarket’s return to the U.S. reshapes the balance, the sector’s next phase will hinge on liquidity depth, platform accountability, and the willingness of institutional and retail participants to treat future-event information as a fully monetizable asset class.
This article has been refined and enhanced by ChatGPT.
