Tarek Mansour

Mansour grew up in Lebanon, where he attended the local College Louise Wegmann. He recalled that his family had only one barely working computer, and that at the time he did not know Google was a company; he only knew math.⁠[1][1][2][2][2]

As a teenager, he was a competitive skier in Lebanon, and he practiced taekwondo for many years.⁠[1]

Mansour returned to the United States to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied electrical engineering, computer science, and mathematics. In 2016, he was an equity derivatives intern at Goldman Sachs; at the time, institutions were rushing to hedge the risks posed by Brexit, and investment banks could only sell complex structured products as approximate substitutes. This led him to believe there should be an exchange where events themselves could be traded directly as the underlying.⁠[1][3][3][3][3]

Before founding Kalshi, he worked as a structured credit and equities analyst at Goldman Sachs and as a global macro trader at Citadel.⁠[1]

In 2018, Mansour graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and mathematics and a Master of Engineering degree; while there, he was a member of honor societies including Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu.⁠[1][1]

That same year, he co-founded Kalshi with Luana Lopes Lara, whom he met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who earned a master’s degree in computer science. The company’s name comes from a word in his native language.⁠[1][4][3][2]

Kalshi was accepted into Y Combinator’s Winter 2019 batch, with Luana Lopes Lara and Mansour listed as founders. That same year, Kalshi began undergoing regulatory due diligence in pursuit of becoming a federally regulated event contract exchange.⁠[5][5][3]

On November 4, 2020, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a designation order to KalshiEX LLC, Kalshi’s exchange entity, granting it designated contract market (DCM) status.⁠[6][6]

In June 2021, Kalshi officially launched, allowing users to buy and sell event contracts that settle as “yes” or “no” on questions such as inflation data, recessions, and whether New York indoor dining would close again. Mansour argued that the economic purpose of hedging outcomes and the market pricing mechanism distinguish Kalshi from a casino, and that the platform does not profit from users’ losses.⁠[7][3][3][3][7][7]

Mansour said such markets resemble a tool that aggregates public opinion in real time: participants must back their judgments with real money, so the markets often come closer to what people actually think than polls do.⁠[3][3]

In September 2024, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb rejected the CFTC’s request to block Kalshi from offering contracts on control of Congress, and Kalshi launched the contracts on September 12; the CFTC immediately appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit temporarily barred Kalshi from offering the contracts. On October 2, a panel of the appeals court unanimously denied the CFTC’s request to stay the original ruling pending appeal, and Kalshi relaunched the contracts hours later.⁠[8][8][8][8]

That day, Mansour wrote on X: “US presidential election markets are legal. Officially. Finally. Kalshi prevails.”⁠[8]

In November 2024, after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) searched the home of Shayne CoplanShayne CoplanShayne Coplan is the founder and chief executive officer of Polymarket, the prediction market platform he founded in 2020, and advocates using market prices to aggregate people’s judgments about the probability of events. He attended New York University before leaving to start a company, and has led Polymarket’s fundraising, its return to the U.S. market, and its product expansion.Open the full entry, CEO of competitor PolymarketPolymarketPolymarket is a prediction market platform founded by Shayne Coplan in 2020, on which users buy and sell shares in the outcomes of political, sports, financial, cultural, and other events, with trading prices regarded as the market’s estimate of the probability that an event will occur. It rose to prominence during the 2024 US election, returned to the US market in 2025 by acquiring a licensed exchange and clearinghouse, and received a major investment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, while facing gambling-regulation and insider-trading scrutiny in US states and several countries.Open the full entry, some Kalshi staffers teamed up with influencers to spread memes mocking Coplan; Mansour acknowledged this the following month, saying, “Some of our team got pretty heated.”⁠[9][9]

In December 2025, Kalshi completed a $1 billion Series E funding round at a valuation of $11 billion.⁠[4][10]

In a podcast interview, Mansour compared his rivalry with Coplan to the one between American football quarterbacks Tom BradyTom BradyTom Brady is an American retired football quarterback, sports broadcaster and investor. He played for the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, winning seven Super Bowls across twenty-three NFL seasons. His subsequent work includes sports broadcasting, team ownership and sports-related business ventures.Open the full entry and Eli Manning.⁠[9]

On May 7, 2026, Kalshi announced a $1 billion Series F funding round led by CoatueCoatueCoatue is a technology- and innovation-focused investment management firm founded by Philippe Laffont in 1999, operating in both public and private markets. Its current website lists Thomas Laffont as co-founder and chief investment officer of private investments; a Form ADV filed on July 29, 2026, disclosed regulatory assets under management of $92,705,722,582.Open the full entry, with participation from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Paradigm, at a valuation of $22 billion, double its valuation five months earlier; it was the company’s third funding round in seven months.⁠[10][10][11]

On July 22, 2026, Kalshi launched a midterm election hub that combines election contract prices, polling, fundraising, and historical election results, and held a launch event in Washington; Mansour sat on a panel with Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson and former White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty. Mansour said that prediction markets don’t care about spin or partisanship and show the judgments people back with real money.⁠[12][12][12][13][12]

Mansour often says that his experience on Wall Street trading floors made him realize that mass adoption of prediction markets requires working with the federal government; he has said that Kalshi would actively seek federal regulation and would “bang our head against the wall until you regulate us.” He positions Kalshi as a CFTC-regulated prediction market and deliberately distinguishes it from offshore platforms such as Polymarket.⁠[9][9][9]

Kalshi: Official website: https://kalshi.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]

X: Public account: https://x.com/mansourtarek_ (opens in a new window)⁠[1]