Kalshi Chief Says IPO Won’t Happen This Year

Kalshi’s CEO has confirmed the company wants to go public, though not right away.

Tarek Mansour said in a CNBC interview Wednesday (June 24) that the prediction market is in the early stages of planning an initial public offering (IPO). He added the listing won’t happen this year, but said it makes sense for Kalshi to start thinking about an IPO at this stage.

“A company of our financial profile with the rate of growth that we’re seeing, that sort of conversation has to happen,” he said. “People start asking that question. And we’re basically thinking about it, but obviously, we don’t have an answer yet.”

The executive’s appearance on CNBC Squawk Box follows a report last week from The Information which said that Kalshi was in early discussions about an IPO but that the listing would likely not come before late 2027 or 2028. Mansour did not offer CNBC an exact timeline beyond saying that an IPO won’t take place this year.

As CNBC notes, Kalshi has experienced substantial growth over the last year, with its valuation jumping from $2 billion in June of 2025 to $22 billion last month. Last week’s Information report, citing unnamed sources, said the company had tripled its annualized revenue since November, bringing that number to $2 billion.

The CNBC report also points out that Kalshi has been trying to become more appealing to Wall Street, but added that the company will need to alleviate insider trading concerns.

Mansour told the network the company has taken steps on that front, including measures to determine who traders’ employers are, along with know your customer (KYC) verification requirements. He also cited cases that Kalshi has brought against people to demonstrate that its efforts to curb insider trading worries are working.

“It’s a hard problem,” Mansour said about promoting market integrity on his platform, “but it’s not an impossible one.”

In other prediction market news, this week saw reports that Meta is developing a prediction platform called Arena that would initially permit betting with play money before the company considers allowing real stakes.

A report on the project by The New York Times said the use of play money would let the platform avoid the regulatory issues it would face if it allowed the use of real money.

As PYMNTS has written, prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket have become increasingly popular.