Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour confirmed in a podcast interview that his employees asked social media influencers to promote memes about the FBI raid on the home of the CEO of his archrival Polymarket.
Both companies offer competitive event betting markets. This is a new kind of betting industry where people bet on the outcome of a variety of events, from elections to pop culture.
The FBI raided the home of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan last month, and it was revealed that Kalshi was trying to capitalize on his competitor’s misfortune by asking influencers to post memes about it. We lost, Mansour said.
“Some of our teams got pretty heated. They didn’t pay anyone. They asked our long-time affiliates to post some of their memes.” Mansour told Nichole Wischoff on this week’s episode of her show FirstMoney In.
Pirates Wires, a media outlet founded by Mike Solana, reported that Kalshi employees were using their influence to publish content suggesting that Polymarket and its CEO, Shayne Coplan, were engaging in illegal activity. However, the Pirates Wires article also acknowledged an apparent conflict of interest with this report. Solana is the Chief Marketing Officer of Founders Fund, one of Polymarket’s lead investors, and Polymarket is an advertiser at Pirates Wires.
A segment of the podcast discussing Kalshi’s response to the raid and competition with Polymarket was removed shortly after it first aired. However, TechCrunch obtained and listened to the deleted portion.
In his podcast, Mansour accused Polymarket of using similar social media tactics against Kalshi. “Both companies have been doing this,” he said, adding that his team believed Polymarket was behind some social media posts saying “we were raided by the FBI too.” “That didn’t happen,” he said. “We have not received an evaluation from the FBI.”
TechCrunch was unable to verify these claims. Neither Polymarket nor Kalshi responded to our requests for comment.
But the CEO said on the podcast that the social media war between members of his company had “gone too far,” adding, “I don’t think there’s any point in doing that.”
Kalshi did not fire the employees involved, but Mansour said the individuals “understand it was a mistake and they should never do something like this again.”
Polymarkets claimed the reason for the raid was related to political motivations surrounding betting on the US presidential election, although both markets were betting on the outcome. According to Bloomberg, the Justice Department is investigating Polymarket for allegedly allowing U.S. users to engage in restricted trading. Under a 2022 settlement with the Product and Exchange Commission, Polymarkets has banned U.S. traders from betting on its platform, Bloomberg also reported.
Kalshi, unlike Polymarket, has been legally permitted to accept transactions from US residents since 2021. In September, the company also won a lawsuit allowing it to accept bets on the election outcome.
Kalshi, which backs Sequoia and Y Combinator, is currently raising a funding round worth more than $50 million, TechCrunch reported last month.
