Elon Musk Political Party Odds Soar to 40% After Fresh Clash with Trump
The odds of Tesla CEO Elon Musk launching a new political party this year have hit 40% on prediction market Kalshi after Musk clashed again with President Donald Trump.
The latest public fallout between the two appears to have been sparked by the passage through the Senate of Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill. The Bill made it through the Senate on Vice President JD Vance's casting vote and will now go to the House of Representatives for a vote.
In a social media exchange, Musk said that if the bill were passed, he would establish a new political party in the United States the next day. In retaliation, Trump threatened to cut subsidies to electric vehicles, a key revenue source for Musk’s businesses, like Tesla. That prompted a defiant reply from Musk, who invited the President to “go ahead and do so.”
The exchange led to escalating speculation that Musk is serious about disrupting the two-party system. On prediction market Kalshi, the odds of Musk setting up a new party this year climbed dramatically to 40%, while on rival site Polymarket, the probability of a new Musk party by the end of July rose to 33%.
These numbers are being taken seriously, given that these markets famously provided the most accurate predictions of the 2024 Presidential Election.
Kalshi funding round values company at $2B
While Kalshi users are speculating on a seismic shift in the US political scene, Kalshi continues to make the headlines, this time due to a new funding round.
This week, Kalshi announced a Series C funding round of $185 million, which pushed the company's valuation to $2 billion. The round is being led by cryptocurrency investment company Paradigm and supported by Neo, Bond Capital, Multicoin, Sequoia, and Peng Zhao, the Chief Executive Officer of Citadel Securities. However, the funding round is the latest step in Kalshi’s global ambitions.
“People choose to work at Kalshi not because of the money we’ve raised, but because of our ambition: build the most important financial market on the planet,” said the Chief Executive Officer of Kalshi, Tarek Mansour, in a social media post.
The news of the new funding round comes simultaneously as rival Polymarket is close to securing its own significant investment. According to reports at the end of June, the company is nearing a funding round of $200 million, which is valued at approximately $1 billion.
