Kalshi has spent most of October being talked about as an election book. On Monday it signed something that reads more like a futures exchange deal. S&P Dow Jones Indices, the S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) division that runs the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, named Kalshi a preferred prediction market platform licensed for event contracts tied to its indices. Those forthcoming contracts will settle against official S&P DJI index values.
The deal runs the other way too. S&P DJI becomes a preferred provider of indices built from Kalshi’s own market data, covering economics, politics and sports, using S&P DJI methodologies. Both sides used the word “preferred.” Neither called it exclusive.
What’s missing matters as much. The October 26 announcement names no specific contracts, no launch dates, no index methodologies and no fees. It doesn’t mention the CFTC. And S&P DJI’s legal language says it doesn’t sponsor, sell or endorse Kalshi’s contracts and makes no representation about trading them. It’s a data and licensing agreement, with the products still to come.
Kalshi already trades the S&P 500, just not on the official number
Yes-or-no bets on where the S&P 500 closes aren’t new for Kalshi. It filed a contract with the CFTC in April 2022 asking whether the index would close above, below or between set levels, with the close taken from a third-party data feed. Earlier this month it launched a perpetual future on 500 large US stocks after a CFTC filing in August. That product tracks the MerQube US Large Cap Index, a stand-in for the benchmark.
So the license buys two things. Settlement on the official print, which removes a reference-data question for any serious trader. And the name, which is the one most institutional desks already price against. Tarek Mansour, Kalshi’s co-founder and CEO, put the ambition plainly: “Kalshi’s aspiration is to be the next great financial exchange.”
The money says investors believe him. On October 29 Kalshi closed a $1 billion Series G at a $40 billion valuation, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management. It was valued at $22 billion in May. The company says non-sports markets now bring in more than $1 billion in annualized revenue. By October 23, Kalshi said it had handled nearly $1.1 billion in trading on 2026 midterm markets, ahead of the November 3 vote. As we noted this morning, Kalshi and Polymarket show up in half of Google midterm forecast searches, including in states that ban election betting.
Why index contracts change the legal fight
Kalshi’s problem has never been finding customers. It’s state regulators. Massachusetts, Michigan, Washington, Wisconsin and New York have all sued over its contracts, mostly sports. In Ohio, a federal judge ruled in March that its products amount to gambling under state jurisdiction. And on Wednesday Utah filed criminal charges against Kalshi and two executives: 13 counts under the state’s gambling ban and one count of profiting from illegal activity.
A contract that settles on the official S&P 500 close is a much harder thing to call a bet on a game. It looks like a binary option on a stock index, the kind of product listed exchanges already sell. Every dollar of volume that moves from football and Senate races into index and economic contracts makes Kalshi’s argument (that it’s a federally regulated derivatives exchange and states should stay out) easier to make.
It also changes who Kalshi competes with. Cboe launched yes-or-no binary options on its Mini-S&P 500 Index in June under the Cboe Predicts label, cleared by the Options Clearing Corporation and sold through Interactive Brokers. CME Group has offered event contracts on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 through FanDuel Predicts since last December. On the data side, Intercontinental Exchange already distributes Polymarket probabilities to professional investors. Two of the biggest US exchange groups already sell yes-or-no exposure to the S&P 500. Now Kalshi is fighting them on their own product.
What to watch
The first contract specs. Strike spacing, settlement time and fees will show whether Kalshi is building something a hedger can use or a cleaner version of its retail range bets. Then the first S&P DJI index built on Kalshi prices, and who licenses it.
After November 3, election volume fades. Index contracts are the part that has to keep running.