Kalshi Raises $1B Series G at $40B Valuation as Crypto Volume Reaches $140B Annualized

Event contracts now carry a $40 billion price tag. Kalshi, the U.S. prediction-market exchange, said on October 29 that it closed “a $1 billion Series G at a $40 billion post-money valuation, co-led by Wellington and Sequoia,” a raise that lands the venue squarely in the middle of the regulated-trading economy. The number is large, but the syndicate is the story: a pension-and-endowment asset manager and one of venture capital’s most durable names are now underwriting a platform that runs sports, politics, crypto, commodities and perpetual futures under one roof.

The round moves Kalshi well past its prediction-market origins. The company said “our overall business’s annualized trading volume now exceeds $1 trillion,” reported more than $1 billion in non-sports annualized revenue, and disclosed crypto trading volume that has reached $140 billion annualized. Those figures place event contracts at the point where regulated derivatives, retail speculation and digital assets are beginning to share the same order book.

A $40 Billion Marker for the Exchange Trade

Kalshi framed the ambition as “building the next-generation financial exchange,” and the investor list backs that claim. Beyond Wellington and Sequoia, the Series G drew in Baillie Gifford, Stripes, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Layer Global, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Sequoia Global Equities, CapitalG, Hudson River Trading and Balyasny Asset Management.

Hudson River Trading and Balyasny are the names to watch. Both are quantitative and multi-strategy firms that make markets for a living rather than writing venture checks on the side. Their presence is a signal that the desks which actually trade for institutions now treat event contracts as market structure, not as a novelty.

The valuation arithmetic is demanding. At $40 billion against the $1 billion in non-sports annualized revenue Kalshi disclosed, the round prices the company at roughly 40 times that revenue line. A multiple that steep only holds if the non-sports businesses keep compounding at the rate the announcement implies, quarter after quarter.

Crypto and Perpetuals Are the Growth Engine

The disclosure shows where the compounding is coming from. “Crypto trading volume has reached $140 billion annualized,” the company said, while its perpetual futures business has reached $83 billion in volume and more than 500,000 traders in the few months since launch.

Put those figures together and crypto is now about 14% of the $1 trillion annualized volume base, while perpetual futures add roughly another 8%. That perps figure works out to around $166,000 in notional per trader, an average that suggests real size rather than a spray of small accounts. Commodities generated more than $100 million in annualized trading fees in three months, politics has passed $8 billion in annualized volume, and the international business, live in more than 140 countries, is approaching $100 million in annualized fees.

The take rate implied by the disclosure is thin but exchange-like. One billion dollars of non-sports revenue against a $1 trillion volume base works out to about one basis point for every ten dollars traded. That is a market-maker’s economics, not a sportsbook’s margin, and it only works at scale.

Kalshi is not the only venue chasing this flow, but it is the one holding a CFTC license for the book. That distinction is the quiet thesis of the round: a regulated book of event contracts and perpetuals can attract the flow that rivals running the same category on crypto rails cannot, even if it costs more to operate. The $140 billion crypto figure is Kalshi’s evidence that the compliant route scales.

Sports Still Carries the Floor

The countercase sits inside the same announcement. Kalshi said sports “brought millions of people” to the platform and “helped establish deep liquidity,” and the company still says it accounts for “over 75% of prediction market trading volume.” The non-sports businesses that justify a $40 billion mark are measured in months, not years.

Commodities, crypto, perpetuals and the international business are all scaling from a low base. A $100 million fee run in commodities and an $83 billion perpetuals book are real, but neither line is yet large enough to carry a $40 billion valuation on its own. The round is a bet that the sum of those businesses, not any single one, becomes the general-purpose exchange the company describes.

There is also the unresolved question of how the sports base weathers regulation. U.S. courts and state regulators have already tested Kalshi’s sports markets, and the company’s push into politics and economics invites scrutiny from an entirely different set of agencies. That is the risk embedded in the valuation that no quarterly metric resolves.

Three Regulators, One Venue

The growth Kalshi is selling is precisely the growth regulators are now examining. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has moved to fold event contracts into its swap rules, a change that would pull Kalshi and rival Polymarket into a compliance regime originally built for derivatives dealers.

Single-stock perpetual futures add a securities dimension on top of that, and the sports book sits under state gaming law. The venue is effectively triangulated across three regulatory regimes at once. Kalshi’s own data shows why that matters: in September roughly 500 entities were active on the platform, and entities other than market makers represented about 25% of total trading volume.

That is a double-edged fact. On one side, it proves the product has moved beyond retail speculation and is attracting the institutional participants that a $40 billion valuation requires. On the other, it means event contracts now draw exactly the kind of counterparty that prompts a regulator to write rules, and the CFTC’s swap proposal treats that migration as a reason for more oversight rather than less.

What the Capital Must Now Deliver

The announced roadmap is specific. Kalshi said it will build indices with S&P, launch single-stock perpetual futures and compute markets, and expand in Latin America and Europe. It is also investing in institutional sales and distribution, the plumbing that hedge funds and proprietary firms demand before they commit meaningful size.

That institutional push already has precedent on the platform. Cantor Fitzgerald opened Kalshi’s prediction markets to institutional clients, and the partnership list now spans Interactive Brokers, Marex, Clear Street, Nasdaq and Stripe. The next observable test is whether the new capital converts those relationships into sustained non-sports volume.

Single-stock perpetual futures and compute markets extend the same logic into two new asset classes. The first lets traders express a view on a single equity around the clock, and the second prices the cost of compute, the input that has become the scarce resource of the artificial-intelligence cycle. Both are ways to turn a macro force into a tradable contract.

The partnership list is a distribution map rather than a vanity slide. Interactive Brokers and Wealthsimple reach retail brokerage accounts, Nasdaq and S&P provide index and data infrastructure, and PayPal and Block reach payments. Each relationship widens the venue’s surface without Kalshi having to acquire those customers itself.

Kalshi did not say whether the round precedes a public listing, and a $40 billion private valuation raises that question on its own. The more immediate measures are quieter: whether crypto and perpetuals keep compounding, whether the CFTC’s rulemaking changes the economics of event contracts, and whether indices and single-stock products attract the liquidity that the valuation already assumes.