“Kalshi seeks to turn uncertainty into a price,” said Eva Ados of fund manager ERShares.
ERShares’ Private-Public Crossover ETF (Ticker: XOVR) has made a $30 million investment in Kalshi, the asset management firm announced Monday.
The ETF, which recently increased its position in rocket maker and space exploration company SpaceX Corp. (Ticker: SPCX), is now looking to add exposure to the popular prediction market exchange.
“Kalshi seeks to turn uncertainty into a price,” said Eva Ados, chief investment strategist and chief operating officer of ERShares, in a statement. “That is why we believe prediction markets matter. They give investors, institutions, businesses, and individuals a real-time signal on future outcomes inside a regulated market structure.”
Kalshi is enjoying booming demand – institutional trading, for example, increased 800% in the six months through May, the company said recently. Over the same time period, annualized trading volume more than tripled, from $52 billion to $178 billion, according to Kalshi.
ERShares says that, like the SpaceX investment, the Kalshi investment was made through its VC Lens, which aims to identify “category-defining” companies before they are widely reflected in traditional public equity benchmarks.
XOVR was relaunched in August 2024 and is described by ERShares as the first ETF to provide access to private equity exposure through a private-public crossover structure.
As of July 10, the fund’s top holding, as a limited partner through a special purpose vehicle, was SpaceX, followed by Nvidia Corp. (Ticker: NVDA), Astera Labs Inc. (Ticker: ALAB), Google parent Alphabet Inc. (Ticker: GOOGL), Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. (Ticker: META), and Robinhood Markets Inc. (Ticker: HOOD).
SpaceX’s mega-IPO last month last month was the biggest offering of all time and the company’s valuation at the end of its first day of trading on June 12 was over $2 trillion. However, SpaceX’s stock has fallen just over 8% since its debut – as of intraday Monday, SpaceX had a market cap of almost $1.82 trillion.
The IPO sparked a flurry of activity in the ETF industry, including BlackRock’s iShares Nasdaq 100 ETF, which was announced last week, the same day that Elon Musk’s company joined the index.
