Prediction-market exchange Kalshi has held early informal talks with investment banks about a potential public listing. A Kalshi IPO is expected no earlier than late 2027 or 2028, especially as annualized revenue now exceeds USD 2 billion.
Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated futures exchange holding the status of a Designated Contract Market. It trades event contracts: derivatives on the outcome of real-world events such as elections, economic data, and sports results. Therefore, it is not a classic crypto exchange. Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, both MIT graduates, founded the platform in 2018. In November 2020, the company became the first US exchange ever to receive DCM status from the CFTC. Most recently, the valuation jumped from USD 11 billion in December 2025 to USD 22 billion following the Series F round in May 2026, which Coatue led with USD 1 billion. Trading volume reached USD 16.81 billion in May 2026. As a result, it stood more than double that of competitor Polymarket at USD 7.08 billion.
Subscribe to our newsletter
The best articles of the week, directly delivered into your mailbox.
Kalshi IPO: banks expected to accept institutional trading integration
According to reports from The Information, the talks are currently at a very early stage. An actual listing is presently expected no earlier than late 2027 or 2028. Therefore, these remain purely exploratory discussions for now. Kalshi itself declined to comment on the reports. Consequently, the reticence fits the informal character of the contacts so far.
Notably, however, the company has already set one concrete condition at this stage. Kalshi requires prospective bank advisers to integrate technically into its own platform, so that their institutional clients can trade directly on Kalshi. As a result, the exchange ties the future bank mandate directly to a strategic lever. Specifically, whoever wants to lead the listing should simultaneously bring in institutional trading volume. This linkage of capital-markets advice and client connectivity is comparatively direct for a still-private company.
Revenue doubles to USD 2 billion through institutional trading
Revenue growth has been steep of late. Sacra estimates 2025 revenue at USD 263.5 million, up from just USD 24 million in 2024. In March 2026, the WSJ initially reported an annualized run rate of USD 1 billion. Subsequently, that figure doubled to more than USD 2 billion.
The main driver behind this development is institutional trading, which rose 800 percent over the past six months. At the same time, annualized trading volume grew from USD 52 billion to USD 178 billion. Consequently, that move equals more than a tripling. On a monthly basis, the gap to the competition is clear. In May 2026, Kalshi handled USD 16.81 billion, while Polymarket managed only USD 7.08 billion.
The Series F valuation of USD 22 billion puts these figures in context. By comparison, the market value of CME Group, the largest US futures exchange, stands at around USD 80 billion. Therefore, as a still-young company, Kalshi already reaches more than a quarter of the established leader's valuation.
State lawsuits and the Clarity Act as a risk factor for the listing
The latest legal blow came from Kentucky. In June 2026, Attorney General Russell Coleman filed suit against Kalshi and other providers in Franklin Circuit Court. Furthermore, the suit accuses them of operating illegal gambling platforms and seeks civil penalties of up to USD 2,000 per violation. It also adds USD 10,000 if older individuals are harmed. According to the complaint, roughly 70 percent of Kalshi's volume stems from sports results. This sports-betting component sits at the center of all state attacks, because it most directly touches the established gambling laws of the individual states.
Against such state-level advances, Kalshi relies instead on the doctrine of federal preemption. The CFTC and the US Department of Justice already sued Illinois, Connecticut, and Arizona in April 2026, arguing that the Commodity Exchange Act supersedes state gambling laws. Subsequently, the Third Circuit ruled in Kalshi's favor and confirmed that CEA preemption also applies to sports-event contracts. This line of defense is central for the company, because without it the platform would face a patchwork of up to 50 different state regulatory regimes. However, the outcome remains open, especially as the Ninth Circuit later heard Nevada's appeal, the result of which is still pending.
In addition, a legislative risk looms at the federal level. Gambling associations around the AGA also wrote to the Senate, urging it to include a ban on sports-betting prediction markets in the Clarity Act. The bill has already passed the Senate Banking Committee, and observers expect passage later this year. For Kalshi, the outcome of this legislation would be consequential. Specifically, if such a clause were to materialize, it would, per the Kentucky figures, hit the largest part of trading volume. Consequently, the decisive risk shifts increasingly from the courtroom to Congress.
A listing would position Kalshi as financial infrastructure
In competition, Kalshi holds a structural advantage. As the first and only CFTC-regulated event-contracts exchange in the US, the company may openly serve US customers. Meanwhile, its main rival Polymarket is not US-regulated and formally does not target US citizens. Overall, Kalshi holds around 90 percent of prediction-market volume in the US, financed by previous capital rounds of roughly USD 2.9 billion. Rivals can hardly copy this regulatory head start in the short term, especially as Mansour worked with the CFTC for nearly two years before the DCM approval.
For precisely this reason, the IPO timing targets 2027 or 2028. Before a listing, the company needs regulatory clarity that only the Clarity Act and the pending court decisions can provide. A standalone counter-proposal, the "Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act" introduced in March 2026 by Senators Adam Schiff and John Curtis, has made no progress so far. At the same time, the IPO environment for fintech and financial-infrastructure companies revived in 2026. As a result, that shift opens a window for a listing in the first place.
The integration condition toward the banks fits this logic. Kalshi wants to establish itself as regulated financial infrastructure before the listing, with election and economic contracts at its center rather than sports betting. Ultimately, this positioning could form the core of a future S-1 and counter the gambling narrative that the state plaintiffs are building against the platform. On that will hinge whether today's exploratory stage turns into a viable listing project.
