Kalshi Taps Comply for Institutional Trade Surveillance as It Fights $36B New York Lawsuit

Kalshi is stepping up its compliance posture as it courts more institutional users, rolling out new monitoring tools while facing a high-stakes legal challenge that could influence the future of U.S. prediction markets. The exchange has partnered with compliance-technology firm Comply to route Kalshi trading data into Comply's regulatory surveillance platform, CNBC reported. The integration is designed to help banks, asset managers and other regulated firms identify whether employees are trading Kalshi event contracts, flag potentially suspicious activity—including possible use of material nonpublic information—and enforce firm-specific restrictions on contracts tied to events employees could influence. Kalshi already operates its own market surveillance, but institutional clients have pushed for prediction-market positions to appear inside the same workplace compliance systems they use to monitor stocks, bonds and crypto. Kalshi says the rollout will display its contracts alongside traditional assets and will also cover its planned perpetual-futures products once launched. The capability targets a common hurdle for regulated firms evaluating exposure to event contracts, which can reference elections, economic data releases, corporate developments and other outcomes where sensitive information may be involved. Large financial employers often require disclosure of outside brokerage accounts and pre-approval for certain trades; extending similar controls to prediction markets could allow limited participation without leaving compliance gaps. For Kalshi, the partnership also reinforces its message that its contracts should be treated as regulated financial instruments rather than "bets." CEO Tarek Mansour has compared Kalshi's market structure to Nasdaq in public defenses of the business. The bigger issue remains legal: whether certain event contracts are governed by federal derivatives rules or state gambling laws. That dispute is now unfolding in New York. On July 31, Attorney General Letitia James sued Kalshi, seeking at least $36 billion in damages, penalties and other relief. Kalshi moved the case to federal court in the Southern District of New York. After the removal, a New York state judge deemed the state's preliminary-injunction request moot, a procedural ruling that did not dismiss the underlying allegations. Kalshi has said the state's claims could threaten the broader event-contract industry. Federal regulators are also part of the landscape. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has sought to block state enforcement actions against federally registered prediction-market operators, while separate litigation over sports-related event contracts continues to probe the boundary between federal oversight and state gaming authority. Kalshi's surveillance push comes as the CFTC has highlighted prediction-market compliance risks. Former Rep. George Santos agreed on July 31 to return $17,569.98 in gains, pay a $17,500 civil penalty and accept a three-year ban from trading through CFTC-registered entities after regulators alleged he made misleading public statements while holding contracts tied to whether he would attend President Trump's State of the Union. Santos neither admitted nor denied the findings. Kalshi referred the trading to regulators, underscoring how platform monitoring can lead to enforcement. Kalshi expects the Comply integration to help employers spot conflicts before they become regulatory cases, making the platform more acceptable to large financial clients. Even so, its ability to win institutional share—and expand into new derivatives products—will depend on how well these compliance tools perform and how courts ultimately rule on the legal status of prediction markets.