Kalshi seeks $65bn valuation as Trump Jr. exits advisory role

Kalshi is in discussions to raise another $1 billion at a $65 billion valuation — a 62.5% increase from the $40 billion figure attached to its October funding round — while simultaneously fighting restraining orders in Louisiana state court and a preemption battle in Arkansas federal court.

The timing is not incidental. Donald Trump Jr. ended his advisory role with Kalshi this week after his venture capital firm 1789 Capital deepened its commitment to rival Polymarket, leading a $1 billion round that valued that company at figures the sources do not specify. Kalshi acknowledged the departure in a statement to Bloomberg, calling it mutual and crediting Trump Jr. with helping market the platform to new customers. The statement contained no mention of the Louisiana restraining order that had been issued hours earlier, or the Arkansas federal lawsuit the CFTC and DOJ filed the same week.

What the reporting gives you, taken together, is a company that has gone from a sub-$2 billion valuation in November 2024 to a potential $65 billion ask in under two years — while accruing legal exposure in at least three jurisdictions simultaneously. The market for private capital appears, for now, unbothered by this. I am less sure it should be.

The legal position matters here in a way that valuation reporting tends to flatten. The CFTC's preemption argument — that the Commodity Exchange Act grants it exclusive jurisdiction over event contracts, displacing state gambling law entirely — has not been resolved by any court with binding authority over Louisiana or Arkansas. The federal courts that have ruled favorably for Kalshi on this question have done so in circuits that do not govern either of these two states. Louisiana's District Judge Jeffrey Johnson issued a ten-day restraining order covering sports, elections, awards, and other contracts. That order runs to a preliminary hearing on November 30. The legal foundation beneath the valuation is pending.

I have watched private capital price regulatory risk incorrectly before. The pattern is consistent: when a company's federal regulatory posture is strong and visible, investors treat state-level exposure as noise rather than signal. The error is not in weighting the federal argument — Kalshi's CEA preemption case is substantive. The error is in treating a pending legal question as a resolved one. The $65 billion figure implies someone has already decided how Arkansas and Louisiana end. No court has.

The Trump Jr. exit is a footnote to the valuation story, not the other way around. His firm bet larger on Polymarket. That is where 1789 Capital's money is. What the prediction market sector does with that information — two of the best-capitalized platforms backed by the same political network, now on opposite sides of the same courtroom fights — is a structural question that neither company's current fundraising materials are designed to answer.