Kalshi's attempt to cast prediction markets as a smarter alternative to Instagram now has an awkward Meta subplot, with NPR reporting that Mark Zuckerberg discussed a takeover of the company last year before Meta moved toward Arena.
According to the report, the Meta CEO met last year with Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour about a possible takeover of the prediction market platform. But three people familiar with the matter told NPR that the deal never advanced.
One version is that Mansour didn't want to sell, while another is that Meta saw Kalshi's legal and ethical problems as too messy, the report reads.
Zuckerberg has since put together a team working on Arena, a standalone prediction market app where users would guess outcomes in news and online trends.
Unlike Kalshi and Polymarket, Arena wouldn't use real money, The Coinformer reported earlier.
- Instead, users would wager play money, while Meta's AI systems would help generate questions and decide whether events happened.
Although the deal never materialized, the tension has since spilled into a proxy shot at Meta, with Mansour telling The Washington Post in a recent interview that Americans would be better off spending time on prediction markets than "brain-rotting on Instagram."
In the meantime, Mansour recently told CNBC that the $22 billion-valued company is already thinking about an IPO, though not this year.
- Founded in 2018 by Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, Kalshi raised $1 billion in May in a Series F round led by Coatue, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, IVP, Paradigm, Morgan Stanley and ARK Invest.