Utah prosecutors have filed 13 criminal charges against prediction market platform Kalshi and its two co-founders, marking a significant escalation in legal pressure against the company.
The charges target Kalshi alongside co-founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, with the case centred on the platform’s sports event contracts offered to users in the state.
Among the charges is one count of pattern of unlawful activity, classified as a second-degree felony under Utah law, which represents the most serious allegation in the filing.
Prosecutors also brought 12 separate counts of online gambling promotion, each carrying third-degree felony status, alongside one count of general gambling promotion filed as a class A misdemeanor.
Utah is not the first state to pursue Kalshi through the courts, as Arizona’s Attorney General had already filed misdemeanor charges against the platform back in March over similar event contract offerings.
The legal battles across multiple states paint a complicated picture for a company that is simultaneously attracting enormous institutional confidence from some of the world’s most sophisticated investors.
Kalshi closed a $1 billion Series G funding round that pushed its valuation to $40 billion, a figure that places it among the most richly valued fintech platforms operating in the United States today.
Wellington Management and Sequoia Capital co-led the raise, with a broad group of additional asset managers also committing capital to the round.
The timing of the fundraise was notable, arriving just days after Kalshi announced a partnership with S&P Dow Jones as part of its stated ambition to expand deeper into mainstream financial services.
Investors appear to be betting that Kalshi’s business model and growth trajectory can withstand the mounting legal scrutiny from state authorities pursuing gambling-related charges against the platform.
The contrast between a $40 billion vote of confidence from institutional backers and simultaneous felony-level criminal charges in Utah illustrates just how contested the legal status of prediction market contracts remains across the US.
Whether the company’s courtroom battles in Utah and Arizona will influence future fundraising appetite, or deter expansion plans, remains one of the defining questions hanging over Kalshi’s next chapter.
