Kalshi Statistics: A $40 Billion Valuation, but What Do the Numbers Count?

Kalshi grew faster than almost any financial company in recent memory. Investors valued it at $2 billion in June 2025 and $40 billion 16 months later. Its headline figures are just as large: a trillion dollars in annualized volume and more than 30 million accounts. Most of those numbers come from Kalshi itself, and many count something narrower than they seem. Court records, regulatory filings and independent trackers fill in what the company doesn’t say.

Figures are the latest available as of early November 2026, unless noted otherwise.

At a glance

• Kalshi was valued at $40 billion in October 2026, up from $2 billion in June 2025.
• Kalshi traded $97.5 billion in contracts over 30 days, but traders paid only $21.9 billion for them.
• Kalshi collected an estimated $2.04 billion in fees in 2026 through October 6, compared with about $263.5 million in all of 2025.
• Sports made up 95% of Kalshi’s revenue in 2025, according to a federal appeals court.
• Retail traders lost about $117 million on Kalshi parlays from January to April 2026, roughly $15 for every $100 they staked.
• More than 30 million Kalshi accounts have been created, but about three-quarters of users have never deposited money.
• Two of three federal appeals courts have ruled that states can enforce their gambling laws against Kalshi’s sports contracts.
• 39 states and the District of Columbia have asked the Supreme Court to take up the case against Kalshi.

Kalshi’s Volume Is Four Times Bigger on Paper Than in Cash

Kalshi traded $97.5 billion in contracts over the 30 days to November 3, 2026, according to DefiRate. Traders actually paid $21.9 billion for those contracts, less than a quarter of that figure.

The gap comes from how Kalshi contracts work. Each one pays out $1 if the prediction comes true, so volume trackers count every contract at $1. A trader who buys a contract for 20 cents adds $1 to the volume figure but spends only 20 cents. Contracts on long shots inflate volume the most.

Kalshi’s own headline figure is the largest. When it announced its latest funding round, the company said its annualized trading volume had passed $1 trillion. That number is a projection of recent activity over a full year, and it covers more than prediction markets. It also includes Kalshi’s commodities, crypto and perpetual futures trading. In May 2026, before perpetual futures launched, Kalshi put its annualized volume at $178 billion, up from $52 billion six months earlier.

Kalshi has also pulled ahead of its main rival. As recently as March 2026, Kalshi and Polymarket each handled about half of all prediction-market trading, according to Pew Research Center. Their combined monthly volume then doubled, from $26 billion in May to $53 billion in July, with most of the growth on Kalshi. Kalshi’s own figures are higher still. In May, it claimed more than 90% of US prediction-market activity. By October, it said it handled more than 75% of all prediction-market trading.

From $2 Billion to $40 Billion in 16 Months

Kalshi’s value has roughly doubled with every funding round since mid-2025. Investors valued it at $2 billion in June 2025. By October 2026, they valued it at $40 billion, 20 times as much in about 16 months.

Kalshi raised $1 billion three times in under a year. A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) gives a look at how that money comes in. In August 2026, Kalshi reported selling $1.12 billion of a nearly $1.5 billion share offering, with the first sale on April 3, 2026. The filing doesn’t state a valuation, so the valuations above come only from Kalshi and the press.

The latest round puts Kalshi well ahead of its main rival. Polymarket was valued at $21 billion in a funding round in August 2026, about half of Kalshi’s latest figure.

The Series G is widely expected to be Kalshi’s last funding round before an IPO, according to The New York Times. In June 2026, CEO Tarek Mansour told CNBC that an IPO would not come before 2027. Asked again in October, he declined to say whether or when a listing might happen, saying only that “there’s been discussions.”

Kalshi’s Fees Jumped From $263 Million to Over $2 Billion

Kalshi doesn’t publish its revenue. The closest public measure comes from InGame, which applies Kalshi’s published fee formula to its trading data. By that count, Kalshi collected about $263.5 million in fees in 2025. By October 6, 2026, it had collected $2.04 billion, nearly eight times the previous year’s total in just over nine months.

Kalshi’s fee depends on a contract’s price. It’s highest on contracts priced near even odds and lower on heavy favorites and long shots. That explains where Kalshi’s fastest-growing revenue comes from: 15-minute markets on whether crypto prices will rise or fall. Their prices tend to sit near 50/50, so in the week to October 5 they made up 13% of trading volume but 20% of fees.

Those markets are behind most of Kalshi’s non-sports growth. In January 2026, 15-minute crypto markets brought in under $10,000 a day in fees. By September, they brought in more than $2 million a day. Including similar markets on commodities and stock indexes, 15-minute markets earned $20.4 million in one week, about 80% of Kalshi’s non-sports fees. Non-sports markets rose from 11% of fees in 2025 to 19.2% in 2026, and to more than 25% in September. Kalshi itself says its non-sports revenue now tops $1 billion a year.

Kalshi’s revenue is often reported as an annualized pace rather than money collected. In June 2026, The Information reported that Kalshi had passed $2 billion in annualized revenue, a figure based on recent months projected over a full year. InGame’s estimate of fees actually collected reached that mark only around the start of September.

Sports Make Up 80% to 95% of Kalshi, Depending on the Measure

Sports drive almost everything on Kalshi. How much depends on what’s counted. A federal appeals court found that over 90% of Kalshi’s trades in 2025 were sports-related, and those trades made up 95% of its revenue. Counted by trading volume, the share is lower, at about 80%.

All of this happened in under two years. Kalshi first listed sports contracts in January 2025, a month after a competitor began offering them. Before that, the exchange was known mainly for markets on the economy, weather and elections.

Big tournaments push the numbers higher still. In June and July 2026, during the FIFA World Cup, sports trading on Kalshi topped $58 billion, according to Pew Research Center. Polymarket’s sports trading over the same two months came to about $22 billion.

Prediction markets now rival traditional sportsbooks in size. Americans bet around $40 billion at legal sportsbooks in the first quarter of 2026, Pew found, about the same as sports trading on Kalshi and Polymarket combined over that period.

Other topics trail far behind. Crypto was Kalshi’s second-biggest category in July 2026, at $6 billion. Politics, once its signature market, has stayed under $300 million in the same month.

Parlays Took Off on Kalshi, and Retail Traders Lose on Them

A parlay links several predictions into one contract. Every leg has to come true for it to pay out, which makes the payout bigger and the odds longer. Kalshi calls them “combos,” and a federal appeals court described them as working the same way as parlays at a sportsbook.

Parlays grew from a sideline into a major part of Kalshi’s business within months. They made up less than 3% of the exchange’s volume in late 2025, according to Sportico. By April 2026, they were about 22%. CNBC tied the growth to the World Cup and the NFL season, which both brought “explosive growth of combo contracts.”

Sportico also measured how parlay traders fared, using Kalshi trading data from Dune, an official Kalshi data partner. From January to April 2026, people using Kalshi’s app and website risked about $800 million on custom parlays. They lost about $117 million, roughly $15 for every $100 they put in. Kalshi collected at least $35 million in fees from those trades.

Those losses didn’t go to Kalshi as the house. Kalshi isn’t the other side of the trade. The money went to the traders who took the opposite positions, often professional market makers.

30 Million Accounts, Far Fewer Traders

Kalshi says more than 30 million accounts have been created on its platform. That figure counts sign-ups. Kalshi itself says roughly three-quarters of its users have never deposited any money, using the platform to track prices rather than trade.

The active user base is much smaller. CBS News reported in June 2026 that about 4 million of Kalshi’s users were active. Roughly 3 million of them were men, and six in 10 were aged 18 to 34.

Professional firms also trade on Kalshi. The company said about 500 institutional entities were active on its exchange in September 2026. Leaving out market makers, those firms accounted for about 25% of all trading volume.

Three Appeals Courts, Two Answers

Kalshi’s legal fight turns on one question. Is a sports contract on Kalshi a financial product, regulated only by the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)? Or is it a sports bet, which each state can regulate? The CFTC approved Kalshi as an exchange in 2020, and Kalshi began listing sports contracts in January 2025. State regulators sent cease-and-desist letters soon after, and the cases went to court.

The Third Circuit held that Kalshi’s sports contracts count as “swaps,” a type of financial contract under federal law, so New Jersey’s gambling laws can’t apply to them. The Ninth and Sixth Circuits disagreed. Both found that the contracts are not swaps, and that states can enforce their gambling laws. The Ninth Circuit put it bluntly: “Kalshi has a gambling problem.”

That split will likely be settled by the Supreme Court. New Jersey asked the Court to take the case on September 2, 2026. In October, 39 states and the District of Columbia filed a brief supporting the request, as did the National Football League, the American Gaming Association, 145 Indian tribes and tribal groups, and a former chair of the CFTC. Kalshi’s response is due December 7, 2026.

Meanwhile, the fight has spread. As of September 2026, 19 states were involved in legal proceedings over prediction markets, according to law firm DLA Piper. The CFTC has also sued at least six states to stop them from enforcing their gambling laws against platforms it regulates.

Utah has gone furthest. After a federal judge ruled in August 2026 that Utah could enforce its gambling laws, the state sued Kalshi in October. Later that month, it filed criminal charges against Kalshi and both of its co-founders, Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, on 14 counts, including 12 counts of promoting online gambling. Utah’s constitution bans gambling outright.

Numbers That Don’t Survive Checking

Most Kalshi statistics start with Kalshi itself. The company releases new figures with each funding round, and other sites copy them. Along the way, a detail often slips. Each figure below was traced back to where it first appeared. Each one went wrong in a different way.

• Built In’s guide to Kalshi says the company “claims institutional activity accounts for over 90% of U.S. activity.” Kalshi said something different. Its May 2026 funding announcement claimed “over 90% of U.S. prediction market activity,” meaning Kalshi’s share of the whole US market. The only institutional figure in that announcement was growth: institutional trading volume rose 800% in six months.
• The credit went to the wrong source. Datawallet’s prediction market statistics page says sports have made up 80% of Kalshi’s volume since July 2024, and credits Pew Research Center. Pew’s analysis doesn’t include that figure. It comes from law firm DLA Piper.
• The date shifted. The same page dates Kalshi’s $22 billion valuation to March 2026. Kalshi announced that round on May 7, 2026.
• Kalshi once promoted itself as “the first app for legal sports betting in all 50 states,” a line now quoted in two federal appeals court opinions. Those courts, the Ninth and Sixth Circuits, both ruled that states can enforce their gambling laws against Kalshi’s sports contracts.

None of these figures is invented. Each started as something real and lost a detail. Before repeating a Kalshi number, check who first published it, whether it covers the US or the world, and whether it’s money already collected or a projection.

What Nobody Publishes

Kalshi releases plenty of figures about its growth. It releases far fewer about how its business makes money and who it makes money from.

Kalshi is a private company and doesn’t publish financial statements. Every revenue figure on this page is either Kalshi’s own annualized claim or an outside estimate built from its fee formula. Even those estimates have a gap. Kalshi pays rebates to market makers and it doesn’t say how much.

Kalshi also runs its own market-making affiliate, Kalshi Trading. A federal appeals court described it as a “significant player on the exchange.” Kalshi has never published Kalshi Trading’s results, so it’s unknown how much of the trading on Kalshi comes from its own affiliate or how much that affiliate earns.

Little is known about who wins and who loses. The only public estimate covers parlays over four months in 2026. No figure exists for how retail traders fare across all of Kalshi’s markets.

Kalshi is one half of the prediction-market boom. Our Polymarket statistics cover its main rival, our prediction market statistics cover the wider industry, and our online poker statistics show how state-by-state gambling law shapes another market. If you spot an error, let us know so we can review it and date any correction.

How to Check It Yourself

Kalshi’s numbers change quickly, so most of the figures on this page are tied to a date. Newer checks will show newer numbers. Here’s where to find each one.

1. $97.5 billion in contracts vs $21.9 billion paid. Open DefiRate’s Kalshi volume page. The summary line at the top gives both figures for the latest 30 days, with the dates.
2. The $2 billion to $40 billion valuations. Kalshi announces each funding round on its news blog, news.kalshi.com. Each post names the amount raised, the valuation and the lead investors.
3. $1.12 billion sold. Search for “Kalshi Inc.” on the SEC’s EDGAR filing database and open the Form D filed August 25, 2026. The figure is on the “Total Amount Sold” line.
4. $2.04 billion in 2026 fees. Open InGame’s article on Kalshi’s non-sports fee revenue and search for “$2.04 billion.” The note below its first chart explains how fees are counted.
5. 95% of 2025 revenue from sports. Open the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in KalshiEX v. Assad (No. 25-7516) and search for “95%.”
6. The Supreme Court case. Search for docket number 26-299 on supremecourt.gov. The latest “Response due” date and every supporting brief are listed under “Proceedings and Orders.”
7. Utah’s lawsuit. The Utah Attorney General’s news page has the civil complaint and the ruling it followed.

Sources

Every figure above traces to one of these.

1. DeFi Rate, Kalshi Volumedefirate.com
2. Kalshi, Kalshi Raises $1B Series G at $40B Valuationnews.kalshi.com
3. RG.org, Kalshi Series G: $1 Billion at $40 Billion Valuationrg.org
4. Kalshi, Kalshi Raises $1 Billion at a $22 Billion Valuation as Institutional Adoption Acceleratesnews.kalshi.com
5. CNBC, Kalshi Valuation Jumps to $40 Billion in Latest Funding Roundcnbc.com
6. Pew Research Center, Prediction Markets’ Trading Volume Doubled Between May and July, Largely Driven by Sportspewresearch.org
7. Kalshi, Kalshi Hits $2B Valuation After Breakout Yearnews.kalshi.com
8. Kalshi, Kalshi Hits $5 Billion Valuation Amid International Expansionnews.kalshi.com
9. Kalshi, Kalshi Reaches $11 Billion Valuationnews.kalshi.com
10. The Block, Kalshi Raised $1.12 Billion via Private Equity Offering Since April, Latest SEC Filing Showstheblock.co
11. SEC, Kalshi Inc. Form Dsec.gov
12. The New York Times, Its Investors Say Kalshi Is Worth $40 Billion. Is an I.P.O. Next?nytimes.com
13. InGame, Kalshi’s Non-Sports Fee Revenue Surges: But Growth Is Almost All 15-Minute Cryptoingame.com
14. InGame (via CDC Gaming), Kalshi’s 2025 Fee Revenue Was $263.5M, With 89% Coming From Sportscdcgaming.com
15. Crowdfund Insider, Kalshi Reportedly Explores Early IPO Path as Annualized Revenue Tops $2 Billioncrowdfundinsider.com
16. US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, KalshiEX, LLC v. Assad, No. 25-7516cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov
17. DLA Piper, Legal Status at Odds: Tracking Developments in Prediction Markets and Sports Bettingdlapiper.com
18. US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, KalshiEX, LLC v. Flaherty, No. 25-1922www2.ca3.uscourts.gov
19. Sportico, Kalshi Parlays and Retail Bettor Lossessportico.com
20. Finance Magnates, 75% of Kalshi Users Never Trade, but Platform Still Intends to Capitalise on Thatfinancemagnates.com
21. CBS News, Prediction Markets: Men, Polymarket and Kalshicbsnews.com
22. US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, KalshiEX LLC v. Schuler and KalshiEX LLC v. Orgel, Nos. 26-3196/5235opn.ca6.uscourts.gov
23. Supreme Court of the United States, Docket No. 26-299, Flaherty v. KalshiEX, LLCsupremecourt.gov
24. Utah Attorney General, Utah Sues Kalshi, Alleging Its Prediction Market Is Gamblingattorneygeneral.utah.gov
25. Al Jazeera, Kalshi, Co-founders Hit With Criminal Charges in US State of Utahaljazeera.com
26. Built In, What Is Kalshi?builtin.com
27. Datawallet, Prediction Market Statistics & Trends in 2026datawallet.com