Kalshi Commits $1 Million to Academic Research on Its Own Midterm Markets

Kalshi, the leading US prediction market exchange, has pledged $1 million and platform data to fund up to 50 academic research projects on the election markets it hosted during the November midterms. The company disclosed the program through Kalshi Research, the unit it launched in December 2025 to give scholars access to its internal trading records. The offer of institutional self-study arrives precisely as the platform faces enforcement pressure on two fronts, a coincidence Kalshi did not address in its announcement.

CEO Tarek Mansour framed the program as evidence of confidence. He was more expansive on X, declaring that "The power to decide what America sees changed hands," pointing to the platform's record of calling winners in roughly 98% of the races it listed. Co-founder Luana Lopes Lara went further, dubbing Kalshi "the future of news." Neither claim has been independently verified, and a RotoWire breakdown found rival Polymarket slightly outperformed Kalshi's House and Senate odds — a result the company's victory lap omitted.

How the grant program works

Applicants must submit pitches by quote-tweeting the announcement post and applying through Kalshi's website. Successful applicants will receive access to any public platform data their projects require. Kalshi has compared the research arm to similar units at leading AI labs, Anthropic and OpenAI — a comparison that invites skepticism, since those labs fund external scrutiny while facing their own regulatory questions. When the unit launched last year, Kalshi claimed it had onboarded scholars from Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago and Yale; the company has not published a roster.

The research arm's existing output leans favorable to its sponsor. One paper reviewing the 2026 midterms reported directional accuracy of 98.2% by the time polls closed, up from 93.8% three months earlier. Brier scores, a standard measure of forecast error where lower is better, improved from 0.040 to 0.016 over the same window. The study claimed Kalshi matched or beat polling averages at every point where polls existed.

The commercial context matters. Trading volume on the 2026 midterm markets topped $2.5 billion, nearly double the $1.3 billion recorded for the 2024 cycle, and listed favorites won 479 of the first 487 decided contests.

What does Democratic control of Congress change?

Democrats took both the House and the Senate on November 3, as Kalshi and Polymarket had forecast, and several party lawmakers oppose prediction markets in their current form. Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Maxine Waters have criticized the platforms for letting users bet on elections, war and terrorism. CNBC has counted nearly 30 prediction market bills introduced since 2025, most from Democrats, according to Cryptopolitan's reporting.

The pressure is not strictly partisan. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, and Senator John Curtis, a Republican, sent the platforms joint letters before the vote asking how they guard against insider trading. The question went unanswered in public, as far as the record shows.

State courts are already active. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin sued Kalshi on November 4, one day after the election, calling it a "pocket-sized bookie" operating without a gaming license. That suit brought the number of states challenging Kalshi to roughly 20. In late October, Utah charged co-founders Mansour and Lopes Lara with 13 felonies.

Could the CFTC force slower contract listings?

The most consequential threat comes from the regulator Kalshi has leaned on for legitimacy. Politico reported on November 10 that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission privately warned Kalshi it could face charges over how it self-certified dozens of new contracts, a fast-track filing process the agency has flagged twice this year. Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana described the matter as a procedural error involving a handful of contracts, many of which never went live.

The distinction between "dozens" and "a handful" remains unresolved. A settlement could force exchanges into slower, contract-by-contract filings — a pace change that would undercut the listing speed on which much of the sector's growth depends. The $1 million research program, whatever its academic merits, cannot answer that question; only the CFTC's next filing window can.