Gamblers may be able to use most providers of 401(k) accounts to buy event contracts – possibly including on sports – via Kalshi before the end of 2026, if you believe the prediction market’s founder and CEO Tarek Mansour.
Speaking Friday at the Solana Accelerate conference in New York, at a panel titled “Regulation and Innovation in the Realm of Prediction Markets” with Kyle Samani of Multicoin Capital, Mansour may have also dropped a hint that parlays could be coming to the platform this NFL season.
Asked about Kalshi’s partnerships with Robinhood and WeBull – and whether more deals are in the pipeline – Mansour said deals with major retirement account providers could be in place by the end of 2026.
“By the next year and a half, I think most mainstream financial brokers, where you have your 401(k), will have Kalshi markets available within app,” Mansour said.
A Kalshi spokesperson clarified that Mansour’s reference to brokers offering 401(k) accounts was a way to specify “that a certain company is a mainstream financial institution,” and did not mean that the markets would be available in 401(k)s themselves. They said there were no plans in place for the markets to be offered directly through 401(k)s.
Charles Schwab, founder of the Charles Schwab Corporation, is a Kalshi investor, after taking part in a $30 million series A funding round in 2022.
Observers may be wary of Mansour’s claims about possible partnerships. On Tuesday, Kalshi announced a partnership with Elon Musk’s xAI, only to retract the statement hours later. xAI says it is “engaged in various discussions” in the prediction markets space, but has not agreed any deals.
Mansour remains coy on sports focus
Mansour did not directly address whether these partnerships would include sports event contracts. Kalshi’s partnership with Robinhood already includes those contracts, though its agreement with WeBull so far does not. Kalshi’s legal stance has been that its sports offerings are legitimate financial markets like the remainder of the market’s offerings.
In fact, Mansour talked very little of sports, despite the vertical making up the majority of activity on his platform. The only direct mention of sports was with regards to the most popular market types, which he claims “ebbs and flows.”
“Last fall, October-November was super election, politics dominated,” Mansour said. “January was politics – ‘What’s Trump going to do?’ February financial markets were large crypto, TradFi markets. And then March was sports.”
Mansour said that currently there’s a “mix” of leading markets, but data analyzed by InGame shows that sports made up the majority of volume in April, as well as so far in May.
Parlays on the way in time for NFL season?
While mention of sports was limited, Mansour may have also dropped a hint that a form of parlays could be coming in time for the 2025 NFL season.
Experts have noted that the challenges of offering parlays – which are a key source of revenue for traditional sportsbook operators – may prevent prediction exchanges from taking major market share. If an exchange can offer multi-leg bets with adequate liquidity, they may be able to seriously disrupt the sports betting industry.
Samani asked if Kalshi may be able to launch markets beyond a simple ‘Yes or no,’ and Mansour suggested a change could be coming right around the time that the NFL kicks off.
“The way I think about it, it’s not about the yes or no question[…] it’s underlying,” Mansour said. “We’ll probably have some sort of new structures in Q3 and Q4 this year, and we’re going to go much more aggressively next year.”
New crypto partnership
Minutes before Mansour appeared on stage, Kalshi announced that users can now use the Solana cryptocurrency for deposits. Kalshi already accepted deposits via Bitcoin and Ethereum.
According to CoinMarketCap, Solana is the sixth-most-popular cryptocurrency in the world.
