Kalshi co-founder on risky predictions she made that led to $1 billion

Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara spends all day thinking about the possibilities. Coming from a distinguished background of math degrees and positions at some of the world’s most successful hedge funds, a mindset focused on thinking clearly about potential outcomes comes naturally to him. But the youngest self-made female billionaire ever had to overcome tough challenges to become confident and build the largest prediction markets trading business in the US. This wouldn’t happen without a risk-taking approach, which many people, especially women, don’t follow, she says.

KalshiFounded in 2018 by MIT classmates Lopes Lara and Tarek Mansour, it allows users to buy and sell contracts tied to real-world outcomes in areas as diverse as weather, sports, pop culture, economics and politics. Users buy “yes” or “no” contracts depending on whether an event will occur, and prices reflect this probability.

But it took years for the seemingly simple idea to become a new kind of regulated financial market; The co-founders faced many government battles and skepticism from their own boards. When Lopes Lara and Mansour first started the project, many people told them it wouldn’t work. “[It] Speaking to CNBC’s Julia Boorstin on the latest episode of the “CNBC Changemakers and Power Players” podcast, Lopes Lara said that for many years it seemed like he wasn’t going anywhere.

Lopes Lara was named to the 2026 CNBC Changemakers list.

Kalshi spent years navigating the regulatory process before receiving approval in 2020 from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees derivatives markets in the United States. Lopes Lara said that this period tested the founders’ faith in this concept. “We talked to a lot of people at the time and they said: ‘This is impossible. Rates are below 1%. You’ll never make it,” he recalled.

He said being somewhat naive but also driven, given their history of working on math degrees at MIT, may have helped the co-founders get ahead even though they had no experience starting companies. “We solved difficult mathematical problems, [and] We’re going to solve this regulatory-government problem,” he recalled of their mindset. At the end of what he described as “all-nighters” at MIT, “we thought, why don’t we try to do this? Because we’re dedicating a lot of time to this, and at some point we probably need to try and see if we can get this somewhere. If anyone is going to make this happen, it should be us. … We were so in love with this problem and this idea,” he said.

Rather than backing down when regulators raised concerns, the founders repeatedly came back with legal research and data analysis to make their case for prediction markets. The culmination of the years-long fight was Lopes Lara’s call to sue the US government over election markets ahead of the 2024 presidential contest after talks with regulators stalled. “[One of] Lopes Lara said that the biggest event that takes place every four years in the world is the American elections. “Electoral markets truly are the holy grail.”

The company spent more than two years at the CFTC trying to get its election markets approved, and eventually Lopes Lara decided that the “only option” the company had was to sue the government.

Among the forces opposing him in this decision was the company’s board of directors. “We went in at every board meeting for almost two years and told the board: ‘We’re working on elections. We’re working on elections. We’re working on elections.’ … They would always say, ‘It’s not working.’ It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work.”

He had to tell the board that the founders, with him leading the call, had decided to sue even though the board had advised them to focus on other business opportunities. But for Lopes Lara, everything was simple. The odds were in their favor. “There’s no point in not doing this,” he recalled thinking at the time. Although the board ultimately supported the decision, in the month leading up to the court decision, Lopes Lara said, “I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t exercise. I was like a hot potato running around trying to get everything done.”

Kalshi won the case and the results are clear. Since this legal precedent, Kalshi’s weekly trading volume has reached $2 billion. During New York City mayoral election week, Kalsi generated over $130 million in election-related trading volume. More recently, Kalshi recorded nearly $1 billion in trading volume during the Super Bowl. The company recently Raised $1 billion from investors With a valuation of $11 billion.

Kalshi continues to shape events today, with contracts on recession risk from the US-Iran war among trades formed based on recent news. But this growth has not been without controversy, as trading related to US military actions has also drawn swift response from Congress and broader concerns about insider trading. Kalshi is also embroiled in numerous legal disputes over whether his conventions should be regulated as gambling under state law, as the gaming industry devotes significant resources to lobbying efforts targeting what he sees as a gap in the prediction market.

Lopes Lara said he strongly believes in both the company’s legal arguments and its future. However, when deciding whether to start the company or not, he first had to map out all possible scenarios regarding the company and be prepared for every possible outcome, including failure. He used a very Kalshi-like approach in this decision.

“The best way to think about decision making is: Make sure you have all the data you can about the situation, then map out the possible scenarios and then put probabilities on them,” Lopes Lara said.

The approach reflects his broader philosophy on risk and entrepreneurship. He believes that many people avoid pursuing ambitious ideas because they focus too much on the negative aspects, but in his experience, the worst outcome is often less severe than people believe.

“I find that most people are afraid to take risks… they worry too much about the downside. They worry too much about what will happen if things go wrong. But a lot of times people overthink about it,” Lopes Lara said. “If I quit my job to do this… and it fails, it’s over. No, you’ll probably get another job and maybe you’ll be a little bit behind where you are now. And maybe you won’t even get a single promotion, and that’s his level. It’s very easy to trick yourself into rationalizing your fear of taking risks,” he said.

“When you map out the whole tree, you realize that most of the time it’s not that bad. Obviously, there’s a lot of financial risk, all that, and a lot of other considerations. But I think people, especially women, need to take more risks and be honest with themselves about why they’re not doing it. Because I think a lot of times it’s just fear.”

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Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a business relationship that includes customer acquisition and minority investment.