Tarek Mansour

Tarek Mansour is the co-founder and CEO of Kalshi, a pioneering prediction markets firm that allows users to trade on the outcome of future events. Born in California, Mansour spent his early years growing up in Lebanon before returning to the United States in 2014 to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

At MIT, Mansour pursued Bachelor's degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics, graduating in 2018. During his time there, he also worked as an artificial intelligence researcher at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and served as a senior consultant. His early career included significant stints in finance, working as an equity derivatives analyst at Goldman Sachs in 2016 and later as a global macro trader at Citadel from 2018 to 2019.

These experiences at major financial institutions were pivotal, as Mansour observed a prevalent need to hedge against real-world events like Brexit, but no direct financial instrument existed for this purpose. This realization, shared with his MIT co-founder Luana Lopes Lara, inspired the creation of Kalshi in 2018. The company achieved a significant milestone in November 2020 when it became the first federally regulated exchange in the U.S. for event contracts, receiving approval as a Designated Contract Market (DCM) from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Under Mansour's leadership, Kalshi has grown into the largest federally regulated exchange of its kind, challenging traditional financial and betting industries by enabling trading on a vast array of topics, from economic indicators and weather events to political elections. He has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and has led Kalshi through crucial legal battles to expand the scope of prediction markets, including the legalization of election contracts in the U.S. in 2024. Mansour envisions a future where prediction markets fundamentally reshape how information is aggregated and valued, emphasizing truth and transparency over speculation.