Donald Trump Jr. visits Nuuk, Greenland, on Tuesday, January 7, 2025. Donald Trump Jr. is on a private visit to Greenland.
Emil Stach | Via Reuters
Prediction market company Kalshi is adding Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of the president-elect, as a strategic adviser, the company announced Monday.
Kalshi rose to prominence in the run-up to the election last year after a court victory over the Commodity Futures Trading Commission paved the way for legal election betting in the U.S. Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour told CNBC on Monday that Trump Jr.’s interest in technology and new forms of media made him a good fit with the company.
“Don has always been at the forefront at these types of spaces and new technologies. He’s always been very in tune with what the American people feel and want,” Mansour said on “Squawk Box.”
In a post on the social media site X, Trump Jr. highlighted the quick reaction of the prediction market on election night to show a Republican win as a reason he wanted to work with Kalshi.
“On Election night at Mar-a-Lago, while biased outlets called the race a coin toss, my family and close friends used the prediction market Kalshi to know we won hours ahead of the fake news media. I immediately knew I had to contribute to their mission,” Trump Jr. wrote.
The Kalshi move is the latest in a string of post-election partnerships between Trump Jr. and various companies. He joined the advisory board of drone-maker Unusual Machines in November, and the board of directors of e-commerce company PublicSquare in December.
Those new roles come amid a broader shift by business leaders to embrace the incoming Trump administration. This includes Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who announced changes last week to loosen speech restrictions on Facebook and roll back diversity initiatives within the company.
In the “Squawk Box” interview, Mansour pushed back against the idea that adding Trump Jr. to the board was made for political considerations.
“We’re not a political company in any way, shape or form,” Mansour said.
“We’re a company that’s deeply obsessed with building a great prediction market that brings truth to the world,” he added.
Mansour also said that Kalshi has seen dramatic gains in users since election betting was legalized, and that the new users appear to be sticking around now that the election is over. The most popular markets on the site currently include potential pardon recipients from President Joe Biden and the daily high temperature in cities, including Chicago.
Odds and gambling platforms do not use methodologies used by traditional political polling, and therefore are not substitutes for political polls.
