Thomas Peterffy, founder and Chairman of Interactive Brokers, wanted to buy Kalshi in 2021. Tarek Mansour, co-founder and CEO of the prediction markets giant, recently revealed that Peterffy invited Alfred Lin, a Sequoia partner, to his house and made an offer to buy Kalshi, but Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, the platform’s co-founders, turned it down.
Lin is also a Kalshi board member, a position he took after the venture capital's investment in the prediction markets' Series A round around 2021.
“At the time, Kalshi was very early — with very few users, very little volume, and almost no brand recognition. But Thomas saw the vision before most people did,” Mansour wrote in a LinkedIn post.
The Leader in the Prediction Markets Industry
Since then, Kalshi has become a major player in its fast-growing industry. The platform raised $1 billion this week at a $22 billion valuation in a round led by investment firm Coatue Management.
Its offshore competitor, Polymarket, is reportedly seeking a valuation of $20 billion.
Kalshi was founded in 2018 by Mansour and Lara, but the platform’s rise came in recent years, especially after these platforms became mainstream with bets on the last US presidential election.
Although Polymarket led with its US election bets, Kalshi began offering them after it won a lawsuit against the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which effectively changed the prediction markets industry in the US.
The biggest markets on Kalshi, however, remain sports wagers. This has also worried established sports betting companies, and many of them, along with state regulators, moved against the prediction markets platform in court.
Interestingly, the current leadership of the CFTC strongly favours prediction markets and has even sued states for banning these platforms.
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The Preferred Platform for Partnerships
Due to the rise of prediction markets, many platforms, including Robinhood and Interactive Brokers, began offering event contracts to their customers, mostly through partnerships with Kalshi.
Peterffy also recently said in an interview that prediction markets are “a source of vital information” for Interactive Brokers’ customers. “Our customers must know how the economy is evolving in different regions, consumer demographics, and industries around the globe,” he added.
