Despite legal battles, controversial prediction market wagering sites Kalshi and Polymarket have raised millions of dollars in funding to boost their assault on now traditional iGaming.
Kalshi, founded by U.S. immigrants and MIT alumni Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara in 2018, has just secured US$185 million (£134.64m) from a cluster of crypto-facing investment firms and is now conservatively worth around US$2 billion (£1.45bn); while Polymarket is, reportedly, on the cusp of getting US$200 million (£145.65m) from similar crypto-focussed sources.
Having successfully beaten off legal challenges from gambling industry regulators and representatives in the big player states of Nevada and New Jersey, Kalshi is currently the only prediction market site to enjoy full legal status, as certified by the federal regulatory Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC); thanks in great part, observers note, to its close ties with the Trump administration.
Heavy Artillery
President Trump’s son, Donald J. Trump Jr., is an official paid adviser to Mansour’s company and current Trump nominee for chair of the CFTC is Brian Quintenz, ex-Global Head of Policy at web3 and venture capital fund a16z crypto, and one-time Kalshi board member.
This latest round of funding gives Kalshi added heavy artillery to continue its assault on online sports betting, hitherto dominated in the states by the Big Three of FanDuel, DraftKings and BetMGM.
So great is the challenge to these principal movers that they too are now actively exploring Kalshi’s unique sports betting runaround by setting up affiliate prediction market verticals of their own.
Cryptocurrency
Kalshi’s new funding round was orchestrated by cutting-edge San Francisco-headquartered crypto and tech-facing venture capitalists Paradigm, also founded, like Kalshi, in 2018.
Meantime, Polymarket, founded more recently, in 2020 in New York City, and operating exclusively as a cryptocurrency-based site, is also gearing up to challenge traditional betting companies.
It describes itself as a “decentralised” operator–a handy euphemism for “off-shore”–and claims to be “the world’s biggest prediction market”, offering a platform where investors can place bets on various “future events, including economic indicators, awards, political and legislative outcomes, as well as weather.”
One thing’s for certain.
There’s a fair wind blowing for Kalshi, Polymarket and a clutch of other prediction market sites.
Watch this space.
