Kalshi is reportedly pursuing a $20 billion valuation as prediction markets expand beyond sports, potentially attracting audiences that sportsbooks have historically struggled to reach. That includes women and younger users.
Kalshi is chasing a blockbuster $20 billion valuation as it looks to expand prediction markets beyond sports, which currently account for most trading volume, into areas such as politics, economics, and pop culture.
The prediction market platform is actively trying to diversify beyond its core base of young male sports bettors. Part of that effort involves reaching audiences sportsbooks have historically struggled to attract — including women and younger users who engage more with pop culture and social media.
Women now make up 26% of users, up from 13% just 10 months ago, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
One aspect of this strategy involves partnering with female influencers and paying them to post on social media. The company has also hosted pop culture-themed events while offering betting on topics such as Survivor, the Oscars, Taylor Swift, politics, economics, and sports.
The WSJ reported that Kalshi is now discussing a fundraising round that could value the company at around $20 billion. That figure is a far cry from the $2 billion investors assigned to the company in June 2025 and the $11 billion valuation it reportedly reached in December 2025.
Ignoring a Whole Market
To understand why the female market remains untapped, it helps to examine why the traditional sports betting industry has never succeeded in reaching it.
The gold rush that followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to end the federal sports betting ban in May 2018 triggered a wave of platform launches. Companies have spent huge sums on advertising, bonuses, and celebrity partnerships.
Americans now legally wager hundreds of billions of dollars each year on sportsbooks. Yet the sector still struggles to generate consistent profits.
Young men who were already entrenched in fantasy sports and sports media quickly migrated to sportsbooks. However, women largely stayed away.
Sportsbook companies designed their products for a specific type of user. That user typically watches a lot of games, follows injury reports, understands spreads, and enjoys placing money on selections they have spent hours researching.
Marketers also directed most advertising toward this group through influencer partnerships, sponsorships, and heavy brand promotion.
The industry ultimately built a product that works very well for a narrow slice of the population while making little effort to appeal to anyone outside its core demographic.
Catering to Different Needs
Sports betting rewards obsessive domain knowledge, such as injury reports, historical matchup data, and odds movement. Prediction markets reward a broader mix of expertise and intuition.
Knowing Taylor Swift’s public persona well enough to anticipate her choices is one example. The same logic applies to understanding political dynamics well enough to price an election outcome, or tracking pop culture sufficiently to call a reality TV result before the finale airs.
Millions of people already possess this type of knowledge. That includes expertise in politics, culture, economics, and current affairs, yet traditional sportsbooks never found a way to monetize it.
According to WSJ, Kalshi now pays female influencers to post about their bets, features young women in advertising campaigns, and actively seeks feedback from female customers.
Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara said in an interview that, within a decade, the company hopes its user base will mirror the U.S. population’s demographic breakdown.
Trying to Justify a Big Valuation
Kalshi’s push for a $20 billion valuation requires a compelling growth story to justify that figure. The company is reportedly holding discussions about a new funding round.
Rival Polymarket is reportedly exploring a similar fundraising round, despite remaining largely unavailable to U.S. users.
Kalshi has reportedly surpassed $1 billion in annualized revenue, with some sources telling WSJ that its run rate is closer to $1.5 billion. While impressive, a $20 billion valuation still requires a growth trajectory that the current customer base cannot fully justify on its own.
Sports still dominate the platform, accounting for roughly 65% of trading volume so far in 2026.
State regulators across the country continue to challenge the company legally, arguing that its sports markets violate gambling laws. Also, legislation has been introduced in Congress and at the state level to restrict prediction markets from offering certain markets.
These developments follow recent controversy surrounding markets tied to a potential U.S. strike on Iran and the removal of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
Suspicious trades connected to the Super Bowl and linked to Jeff Bezos’ stepson’s fraternity also raised questions.
In Bezos’ case, fraternity members started placing bets that the Amazon founder would not attend the Super Bowl after information about his plans circulated within the house and its alumni network.
By contrast, a separate rumour circulating through fraternity group chats that actor Mark Wahlberg would attend the game triggered more than $24m in trading before proving false.
In both cases, the rumours suggested the information originated with family members who attend the colleges, although the sources have not been confirmed.
That pressure explains why diversification matters so much. Kalshi continues pushing markets tied to economics, politics, and pop culture while also trying to engage a broader mix of users — including women and college students.
What Research Says About Women and Gambling
Researchers have produced a substantial body of work examining how women engage with gambling. The most consistent finding shows that women and men gravitate toward fundamentally different products.
Studies show that women have historically preferred chance-based games such as online slots, bingo, and lottery-style products. Men, by contrast, have gravitated toward sports betting and games they perceive as skill-based.
Prediction markets occupy an interesting space between these two extremes. They share the outcome-based structure of sports betting while also rewarding knowledge, intuition, and research in ways that pure chance games do not. That hybrid structure may help explain why prediction markets are gaining traction with women in ways traditional sportsbooks never achieved.
Younger women appear to be shifting, too. While older female gamblers have historically favoured chance-based products, research suggests younger women are increasingly drawn to more knowledge-driven formats, precisely the territory Kalshi occupies.
If that generational trend continues, the platform may be riding a genuine wave of changing behaviour rather than simply manufacturing one through influencer deals and themed watch parties.
Research indicates that 20% of women aged between 18 and 49 now hold an active sports betting account. The number of women experiencing gambling-related harm has been rising as they place bets more frequently and at younger ages than in previous generations.
Reframing the Logic of Prediction Markets
Aggie Rozite, who runs the X account “KalshiGirls” and receives payment from Kalshi to promote the platform, described her introduction to the product in terms of its internal logic.
Speaking to the WSJ, she argued that prediction markets cannot rely on the wisdom of the crowd when only a narrow segment of the population contributes to the crowd.
If prediction markets truly derive their value from aggregating diverse and distributed knowledge, then a platform dominated by users who rely on similar information sources ultimately produces weaker predictions.
Increasing participation across a broader demographic, therefore, strengthens both the business model and the core product.
Kalshi has clearly identified a significant untapped audience that the existing gambling industry has largely overlooked. Whether the company ultimately justifies its $20 billion ambitions may depend on whether that broader vision of the market and the people it seeks to serve holds up as regulators continue to scrutinise how far prediction markets can expand.
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