In today’s memetic, always-on internet, where the “current thing” shifts by the hour and more and more events capture worldwide attention, making sense of what’s actually happening and the sentiment around those moments has become increasingly difficult.
Traditional media sources often fall short of capturing the full picture and instead optimize for clicks. Polls miss. Social media only amplifies the problem: it’s cheap to voice opinions without consequence, creating a flood of hot takes disconnected from reality.
Prediction markets cut through the noise: they’re the cleanest early signal of what’s actually happening. If social media is qualitative opinion, prediction markets are quantitative conviction. Talk is cheap. Let’s see you put your money where your mouth is.
By flipping the model, prediction markets have emerged as a new asset class. Every question—whether about politics, economics, technology, sports, or the weather—becomes an investable asset. Traders can express precise beliefs (e.g., “Trump wins 2024”), hedge specific risks (e.g., “hurricane wind speeds over broad insurance”), or make targeted investments (e.g., “Optimus on sale before 2027”—separate from a full view of Tesla and its car business). As global attention fragments across more and more events, the surface area of tradable questions expands.
But the power of prediction markets extends beyond trading. The markets themselves produce information, providing a live probability that is more disciplined than a poll, pundit, or headline. Prediction markets are not just an asset to trade, but a signal the world can use: a feed of what people truly believe when incentives are aligned.
Kalshi has emerged as a leading prediction market platform. Its founders, Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, have consistently chosen the difficult but more responsible path, pursuing a years-long journey toward licensure and becoming the first CFTC-regulated prediction market. As we saw with Coinbase in cryptocurrency trading, Kalshi prioritized regulation and compliance from day one, earning trust and broad distribution. And their breadth of markets, liquidity, and infrastructure are built for scale.
The result: Kalshi has more traffic, transactions, and volume than all other prediction markets combined, and is growing market share at the fastest rate. The company has also become the partner of choice for major brokerages like Robinhood and Webull. The flywheel of more markets, more traders, more liquidity is accelerating, leading to Kalshi scaling to $50B+ of annualized volume today, up over 25x since the start of the year. And today, they announced their global expansion to over 140 countries. [Source]
My partners have known Tarek and Luana since Kalshi’s earliest days. I first met Tarek in May 2024 at Cafe Lyria, an understated but overpopulated coffee shop that felt like an inappropriate place to debate the future of the financial system. But we did! There, I learned how two exceptionally sharp twenty-something math nerds were still awaiting their clearinghouse approval. The market of “will Kalshi list the 2024 elections?” would probably have traded below 50%. And even if the elections were approved, many thought prediction markets would come and go with the elections. Instead, Kalshi has become a mainstream consumer phenomenon. Since shaking hands to partner over the summer, the company has delivered what we imagined would take six months in just a few weeks.
We’re thrilled to co-lead their latest financing and back Tarek, Luana, and the team as they scale the category‑defining company. In Arabic, Kalshi means everything. Every question about the future should be tradable, and Kalshi has the opportunity to capture what may become the largest and most important financial market. Kalshi is the truth mechanism we need.
I’d like to thank Marc Andreeseen, Chris Dixon, and Santiago Rodriguez who have made instrumental contributions to this investment from a16z Growth and a16z crypto.
