Diamond: Kalshi
You don’t need to be a certified soothsayer to spot the direction in which prediction markets are travelling, with revenues and valuations soaring all round and Kalshi leading the way.
Kalshi’s latest funding rounds have seen its valuation go from $5bn in October last year to $11bn in December. It now stands at $22bn, giving co-founder Luana Lopes Lara the handy Christmas present of the title of youngest-ever self-made woman billionaire, ahead of Scale AI co-founder Lucy Guo and the ubiquitous Taylor Swift.
Kalshi’s growth trajectory exploded in 2024, when a court ruling allowed it to list election contracts in the run-up to the US presidential election. Since then it has pushed aggressively into sports betting, which accounts for more than 70% of activity on the platform.
Its annualised trading volume has rocketed from $5.5bn in April 2025 to $178bn last month, and its annualised revenue has reached $1.5bn. Most of its users are retail traders, but the company has said that it will use its new funds to develop products that will boost its appeal to institutional investors.
There’s definitely a Wild West feeling to the market that is attracting the interest of regulators, not to mention the startling accuracy of certain Operation Epic Fury-adjacent trades that look less like a prediction and more like an efficient way to monetise rock-solid inside information.
Around 10 states are engaged in legal action against Kalshi on the grounds that its markets constitute gambling and should therefore be regulated by states. Perhaps it helps that the company has Donald Trump Jnr as an adviser.
Dog: Trump Media & Technology Group
Epic fury could well be a way to describe the state of mind of investors who piled into TMTG at its peak; the stock has since tumbled more than 90%, driven by a consistent record of overpromising and underdelivering.
The company is the parent of Truth Social, the social media network of choice for late-night presidential ranting but not much else, as well as Truth+, an obscure TV streaming platform that aims to Make TV Great Again with its pro-freedom news networks and allegedly top-tier nonwoke shows and movies.
Truth Social does not disclose how many users it has, but since it’s not even Melania’s preferred network it’s likely to be a fraction of the numbers of the big players.
TMTG’s latest results show that it managed to lose an impressive $406m in the first three months of 2026, largely as a result of last year’s decision to stick $3.5bn into bitcoin just before the cryptocurrency tanked by about a third.
But never fear, if Plan A doesn’t work, there’s always Plan B. TMTG has announced an unlikely pivot to merge with nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies on the grounds that nuclear fusion would be an excellent way to power hungry AI datacentres, which, of course, it would be, if anybody could get it to work at scale, which so far they haven’t been able to.
Sticking the Trump name onto something and hoping that will make the Don’s legion of fans buy it hasn’t been an entirely foolproof strategy over the years, and it certainly doesn’t appear to have worked in this case.
