Key points
- Kalshi is finalising a round at about $40 billion, per Bloomberg, with Sequoia and Wellington in talks to co-lead and Tiger Global and Dragoneer in discussions. Reports put the size at $750 million to $1 billion. It is described as the last round before an IPO, which the CEO has said will not come in 2026.
- Polymarket is raising about $1 billion at $21 billion led by 1789 Capital, per Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, a 40% step-up on the $15 billion Series E of April. Intercontinental Exchange has put $1.6 billion into the company across two investments and is the only disclosed secondary buyer in either name.
- Kalshi handled $65.8 billion of contracts in the 30 days to October 8, 76% of all prediction-market volume, on an annualised revenue run rate Bloomberg puts near $4 billion. Polymarket's two venues together did $14.7 billion, 17%. The $40 billion price is roughly 10 times run-rate revenue; Polymarket has not disclosed revenue.
- On PMView's share counts, $40 billion is about $1,100 a Kalshi share against a Series F price of $604.86. The five Kalshi prints recorded from April to July averaged about $495, all below the round. Ark marked its Kalshi position at $586.84 on July 31, 3% under the round.
- $21 billion is about $202 a Polymarket share. PMView's mark is $137.70, and the 28 prints recorded from January to May cleared between $104 and $155, just under the Series E price. Neither name has produced three prints in a month since May.
Why it matters
Every secondary bid in these two names is about to be re-based. A seller of Kalshi who last saw the tape at $495 is being told the company is worth $1,100. A Polymarket holder marked at $138 is being told $202. That is the moment sellers appear and buyers hesitate, and it is also the moment the discount to the last round, the number this market trades on, gets widest on paper. Oura is the reminder of what the round price is not: Kalshi's own contract gave Oura's IPO a 99% chance of confirming on September 28, and the company pulled it the next day.
The two rounds
| Kalshi | Polymarket | |
|---|---|---|
| Round now closing | ~$40B, Sequoia and Wellington co-leading (Bloomberg) | $21B post, 1789 Capital leading with ~$300M (Bloomberg, WSJ) |
| Size | $750M to $1B reported | ~$1B |
| Last round | $22B Series F, $1.2B, $604.86 a share | $15B Series E, April 2026 |
| Round before that | $11B Series E, November 2025, $320.76 a share | $9.6B Series D, March 2026, $103.66 a share |
| Step-up on last round | 82% | 40% |
| IPO | Not in 2026, per the CEO; reports say 2027 | No filing reported |
Kalshi's valuation has gone from $5 billion in October 2025 to $11 billion in November, $22 billion in the spring and $40 billion now, four rounds in twelve months. Polymarket's has gone from $9.6 billion in March to $15 billion in April to $21 billion in September. In both cases the new round is being sold on volume: Bloomberg cites Dune data putting Kalshi's cumulative contract volume above $40 billion in August, a fourfold rise over six months, with gross margins near 90%.
ICE is the structural difference between the two cap tables. It invested $1 billion in Polymarket in October 2025, added $600 million on March 27 as part of the Series E, and bought up to $40 million from existing holders at the same time, which closed out its commitment. No other investor in either name has disclosed a secondary purchase. Whether ICE joins the $21 billion round has not been reported.
The volume the rounds are priced on
Thirty days to October 8, per DeFi Rate, which counts every contract at $1 face value and shows dollars actually paid alongside:
| Venue | Contracts | Share | Dollars paid | Change on prior 30 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kalshi | $65.8B | 75.6% | $15.6B | +60% |
| Polymarket US | $10.2B | 11.8% | $3.1B | +167% |
| Polymarket (international) | $4.5B | 5.2% | $2.2B | -3% |
| DraftKings Predictions | $2.3B | 2.7% | $516M | +626% |
| Novig | $1.7B | 2.0% | $508M | +131% |
Two things in that table matter for the price. Polymarket's growth is entirely in its new CFTC-regulated US venue; the international exchange that built the brand is flat. And Kalshi's headline is contract count: in dollars paid its share is 69%, not 76%, because its average contract trades at 24 cents against Polymarket's 50. CNBC reported on September 30 that nearly half of one day's dollar volume in Kalshi's ether contracts came from trades sized within $10 of $5,500, and that combination contracts drove 85% of its notional growth but less than half of taker gains. Neither point changes the ranking. Both bear on what a 10-times-revenue price is buying.
What the private market has actually paid
Kalshi. PMView recorded 12 prints in December and January, every one of them within a dollar of the $320.76 Series E price. Then the Series F priced at $604.86 and the tape fell behind it: five prints from April to July, averaging about $495 in a range from $320 to $635, four of them below the round. Ark's venture fund, the only institutional filer in the name, carried Kalshi at $604.86 on April 30 and cut it to $586.84 on July 31. PMView's mark is $962, a $35.8 billion valuation, derived from the reported round because the tape has gone quiet. At $40 billion and the Series F share count, the new round prices near $1,100.
Polymarket. The tape here has been steadier and lower. From January to May PMView recorded 28 prints: monthly averages of $134, $138, $124, $132 and $126, in a range from $104 to $155, for a company whose Series E works out to about $144 a share. The secondary market was paying a small discount to the round while it was being raised. PMView's mark is $137.70, a $14.3 billion valuation, 5% under the Series E. No mutual fund has filed a Polymarket position. At $21 billion the new round is about $202 a share, 45% above the mark and 40% above the round the tape was trading just under.
| Kalshi | Polymarket | |
|---|---|---|
| Last round per share | $604.86 | ~$144 |
| Secondary average, Apr–Jul / Jan–May | ~$495 | ~$131 |
| PMView mark | $962 | $137.70 |
| New round per share | ~$1,100 | ~$202 |
| New round vs secondary average | +122% | +54% |
Who is on the two cap tables
PMView holds 74 investors on Kalshi and 98 on Polymarket, the latter rebuilt this week to include every angel in the company's filings.
Kalshi is a conventional late-stage book: Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz and CapitalG have each led or co-led three rounds, Paradigm two, with Coatue and Baillie Gifford leading the Series F. Neo, Global Founders Capital, Spark, General Catalyst, Two Sigma Ventures and Ark fill it out. Henry Kravis and Charles Schwab are on the Series A. One angel.
Polymarket looks like a crypto cap table that a hedge fund and an exchange walked onto. Polychain and General Catalyst led the first two rounds, Founders Fund and Blockchain Capital the next two, G Squared the Series C and the D. E. Shaw Group the Series E, with Valor Equity, Dragonfly, Point72 Ventures and 1789 Capital alongside. 1Confirmation has been in five rounds and SV Angel four. Two dozen of the 98 are individuals: Naval Ravikant and Balaji Srinivasan from the seed, Ron Conway, Guy Oseary, Travis Kalanick, Glenn Dubin, Vitalik Buterin, Ariel Emanuel and Tom Dundon later. The full lists are on the Polymarket and Kalshi investor pages.
Three names sit on both: Coinbase Ventures, General Catalyst and Blanck Capital. Donald Trump Jr., whose 1789 Capital is leading the Polymarket round, is a strategic adviser to both companies.
What a holder should do with this
If you own Kalshi. The $40 billion round is a reported term, not a closed one, and the tape has not traded above the $605 Series F since it priced. A bid at $1,100 today is a bid for a round that may close at a different number, with an IPO the company itself puts no earlier than 2027. Sellers who were waiting for a mark above the Series F now have one on paper; expect buyers to offer the Series F, not the new round, until it closes.
If you own Polymarket. The market priced the Series E at a small discount while it was being raised, and the new round is 40% above it. The pattern from Kalshi's own tape, which fell behind its round for a quarter, is the base case: secondaries re-base to the new round slowly, and a seller who needs liquidity before the round closes will give up most of the step-up.
If you are a buyer in either. The question is whether the next re-base is up or down. These are the fastest-repricing names on the platform, four Kalshi rounds in a year, and the revenue multiple on Kalshi is already public-market, not venture. A pre-IPO round is a price at which new money came in; Oura's 99% contract is what a certainty looks like the day before it isn't.
Sources: Bloomberg via Investing.com on the Kalshi round, September 30, 2026; Bloomberg, August 31, 2026, on the Polymarket round; CoinDesk, September 1, 2026; Intercontinental Exchange, March 27, 2026; DeFi Rate prediction-market volume, 30 days to October 8, 2026; CNBC, September 30, 2026, on volume quality; TechCrunch, September 29, 2026, on Oura; Time, on the Kalshi Oura contract. Per-share figures are PMView estimates from each round's share count; secondary figures are monthly or multi-month aggregates of three or more prints; fund marks are from N-PORT filings. Individual trades are available to Pro subscribers on the Polymarket and Kalshi dossiers.