Tarek Mansour is a Lebanese-American entrepreneur who has a net worth of $2.6 billion. Tarek Mansour earned his fortune as the co-founder and CEO of Kalshi, a federally regulated prediction market that allows users to trade on the outcomes of elections, sporting events, economic announcements, weather, entertainment, and other real-world events. Mansour reportedly retains approximately 12% of Kalshi. Applying that percentage to the company's $22 billion private valuation produces a stake worth roughly $2.64 billion. Mansour founded Kalshi with his Massachusetts Institute of Technology classmate Luana Lopes Lara in 2018.

Mansour conceived Kalshi as a simpler alternative to the complicated derivatives that major investment banks create for institutional clients. Instead of using a basket of stocks or a complex options strategy as a proxy for an event, Kalshi allows traders to purchase a straightforward "yes" or "no" contract based on whether the event occurs. Mansour and Lopes Lara spent nearly three years seeking regulatory approval before launching the exchange in 2021. They later sued the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and won the right to offer election-related contracts, a victory that helped propel Kalshi into the financial mainstream. The company's valuation reached $22 billion in 2026. Mansour reportedly owns approximately 12% of Kalshi, making him one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires.

Tarek Mansour was born on May 7, 1996, in California. His family subsequently moved to Lebanon, where he spent most of his childhood and attended Collège Louise Wegmann.

Mansour became interested in mathematics and computers while growing up in Lebanon. He later returned to the United States to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, arriving in 2014.

At MIT, Mansour studied mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering. He completed bachelor's degrees in mathematics and computer science in 2018, followed by a Master of Engineering degree.

Mansour also participated in artificial intelligence research. As an undergraduate researcher at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, he worked on a project that used deep learning to improve the prediction and diagnosis of breast cancer.

It was at MIT that Mansour met Brazilian computer science student Luana Lopes Lara. The two shared an interest in financial markets, quantitative trading, and the possibility of using technology to make sophisticated financial products more accessible.

While attending MIT, Mansour interned in the equity derivatives division at Goldman Sachs. During his 2016 internship, clients were attempting to protect themselves against the financial effects of the Brexit vote and the American presidential election.

Mansour was struck by the complexity of the products Goldman created. An investor who wanted to trade on Donald Trump's election prospects, for example, might have needed to use an indirect strategy involving stock indexes, volatility, currencies, or calendar spreads. The resulting trade was expensive, difficult to understand, and generally available only to large institutional clients.

Mansour believed there should be a direct market where someone could simply trade on whether an event would happen.

He later worked as a global macro trader at Citadel. Lopes Lara separately gained experience at Bridgewater Associates and Citadel Securities. The pair also worked together at quantitative trading firm Five Rings Capital, where their conversations about event-based markets developed into a business plan.

Mansour and Lopes Lara founded Kalshi in 2018. The name is derived from an Arabic word meaning "everything," chosen to represent the founders' vision of eventually making almost any future event tradable.

Kalshi's basic product is a binary event contract. A market might ask whether the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates, whether inflation will exceed a particular figure, or whether a candidate will win an election. Each contract pays $1 if the stated outcome occurs and nothing if it does not.

The contract's trading price can also be read as a probability. A contract priced at 65 cents suggests that traders collectively assign the event a roughly 65% chance of occurring.

Unlike many cryptocurrency-based prediction markets, Mansour wanted Kalshi to operate inside the American financial regulatory system. The founders applied to have Kalshi designated as a contract market by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The process involved extensive legal work, technical reviews, compliance planning, and repeated discussions with regulators. The CFTC finally approved Kalshi in November 2020. The platform opened to the public in July 2021 after raising a $30 million financing led by Sequoia Capital.

Mansour viewed political elections as one of the clearest applications for prediction markets. Elections affect interest rates, taxes, healthcare policy, regulation, and the value of businesses, yet investors historically had no simple instrument for hedging against a particular result.

Kalshi applied for permission to list contracts based on which political party would control each chamber of Congress. The CFTC rejected the proposal, concluding that the contracts involved gaming and were contrary to the public interest.

In 2023, Kalshi sued the CFTC. The decision placed the company in the unusual position of taking legal action against the federal agency responsible for regulating it. Investors and advisers warned Mansour that the lawsuit could permanently damage the company if Kalshi lost.

A federal judge ruled in Kalshi's favor in September 2024, finding that the CFTC had improperly interpreted federal law when it blocked the contracts. After additional appeals and temporary stays, Kalshi was allowed to offer election markets during the 2024 presidential campaign.

The case transformed Kalshi from a relatively obscure financial startup into the leading federally regulated prediction market in the United States.

After its legal victory, Kalshi expanded into sports, entertainment, politics, economics, technology, and popular culture. Its event probabilities were incorporated into financial terminals, brokerage products, and news coverage.

Sports contracts became an especially large part of the platform. That expansion also created new legal challenges, with several states arguing that Kalshi's sports markets amounted to unlicensed sports betting. Kalshi has maintained that its event contracts are federally regulated financial derivatives and therefore fall under the CFTC's jurisdiction rather than state gambling laws.

Investor demand increased alongside trading volume. Kalshi raised $185 million at a $2 billion valuation in June 2025. A December 2025 financing brought in $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation.

In May 2026, the company completed another $1 billion financing at a $22 billion valuation. Investors across Kalshi's funding rounds have included Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, CapitalG, Y Combinator, ARK Invest, IVP, Morgan Stanley, Charles Schwab, and Henry Kravis.

Mansour serves as Kalshi's CEO and principal public spokesman. He has promoted prediction markets as tools for revealing probabilities, aggregating information, and helping businesses and individuals manage risk. He strongly rejects the characterization of Kalshi as a conventional sportsbook, emphasizing that users trade against one another rather than against a house that sets the odds.

Inside Kalshi, Mansour focuses primarily on long-term strategy, regulation, and product direction, while Lopes Lara oversees much of the company's day-to-day execution. The two founders deliberately challenge each other's ideas and have maintained a relatively flat management structure despite the company's rapid expansion.

Mansour has kept his romantic and family life private. He is based in New York City, where Kalshi maintains its headquarters.