By Anirban Sen and Pritam Biswas
Nov 12 (Reuters) – Kalshi is in talks to raise fresh funds at a $65 billion valuation to build a new platform for trading compute futures, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday, days after announcing the finalization of its previous round.
Kalshi could not immediately be reached for comment.
The company raised $1 billion in a new funding round late last month amid efforts to expand beyond event contracts and compete more directly with traditional exchanges.
The round was co-led by Sequoia and Wellington. The October fundraise came just over five months after Kalshi raised $1 billion in a Coatue-led round that valued the company at $22 billion.
RACE FOR COMPUTE FUTURES
The move into compute futures would also be a part of the broader strategy of the prediction market startup in its venture into newer products, as it challenges the likes of CME Group and New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental Exchange.
Compute futures are financial contracts allowing traders to hedge or speculate on the future prices of computing resources like cloud and GPU capacity. The derivatives help companies manage price volatility, lock in future processing power and cut costs in a fast-growing technology market.
CME Group said earlier in the year that it was partnering with Silicon Data to launch compute futures later this year, pending regulatory review. ICE and Kalshi were also in the running for such products as Wall Street’s push deepens for a derivative market for compute.
“America cannot win the AI race without a robust derivatives market for compute,” Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig said in a statement earlier in the year while calling for industry comments on such products.
However, reports earlier in the week said that the regulator has postponed the approval of futures contracts tied to the rental price of graphics processing units as it plans to consult benchmark providers on price manipulation concerns in this nascent asset class.
(Reporting by Pritam Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo, Sriraj Kalluvila and Stephen Coates)
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