Kalshi is conducting outreach to prominent Wall Street banks and hedge funds as the prediction-markets platform readies a suite of futures contracts pegged to US inflation data. The company has set a December 2026 launch date for two new products designed to follow movements in both the Consumer Price Index and core inflation.
Work on a consumer price index futures product is under way at the firm, though no confirmed timeline for its rollout has been established. Under the contracts Kalshi has put forward, inflation movements in the US would become directly tradeable instruments for investors.
Headline CPI and its core counterpart — the latter stripping out food and energy from its calculation — serve as the benchmarks these products are designed to follow. Traders and portfolio managers rely on the pair of readings to track where price pressures stand and to gauge where the Federal Reserve may steer borrowing costs.
Contracts tied to whether the consumer price index breaches set thresholds are among the products the platform has made available for trading. Under the proposed structure, set expiration dates would govern each futures contract while opening up an alternative avenue for participants to gain exposure to inflation movements.
Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour outlined the company's direction, noting that inflation had become a prominent concern for Americans and that Kalshi intended to enter the business of pricing it.
Michael Ashton — a Barclays trading veteran who also runs Enduring Investments as managing principal — has been brought on board at Kalshi to shape contract offerings and build out the platform's institutional investor base. Ashton, who brings hands-on experience with inflation-linked instruments to the venture, has held conversations with banks, hedge funds, and asset managers about the forthcoming platform, describing an ambition for it to become the dedicated exchange for inflation-based trading, a niche where no comparable venue currently operates.
Under the draft specifications, contracts tied to the next dozen monthly CPI release dates would be made available through Kalshi. Four-year coverage would follow, structured around contracts set for May and November delivery. Markets would remain accessible to participants continuously from Sunday's open through the close of trading on Friday. Transaction processing for that activity falls under the authority of Kalshi Klear LLC, a clearinghouse arm registered specifically for that purpose.
Kalshi's expansion into new territory puts it on a course toward competition with established derivatives venues — CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange — whose futures products have long served the institutional trading community. CME launched US CPI futures in 2004, though that contract was eventually pulled from the exchange's available offerings. Liquidity did not take hold in those markets when inflation futures were launched in earlier rounds.
Two distinct corners of the inflation-linked financial landscape account for significant existing volume: Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities carrying a combined face value near USD 2.2 trillion, and a separate pool of inflation swaps whose notional outstanding exceeds USD 5.4 trillion. Futures contracts traded on an exchange operate under fixed, uniform terms, whereas swaps arranged privately between two parties leave the specifics open to negotiation. Trading inflation exposure through a centralised venue removes the need for parties to arrange individual bilateral contracts.
Mike Spindel, who leads investment at Potomac River Capital and has held conversations with Ashton about the contracts, described a liquid futures market as something that would broaden the range of tools available to investors and institutions.
Sports-event prediction contracts gave Kalshi its initial foothold, though the platform has since pushed into territory long associated with conventional derivatives, extending its reach to cryptocurrency futures and commodity-based instruments. Perpetual futures — derivative contracts carrying no set end date — represent one of the products the firm has brought to market. CME Group chief executive Terry Duffy has raised doubts about whether perpetual contracts adequately serve the risk-management requirements that institutional traders typically depend on.
Under Kalshi's upcoming inflation futures structure, each contract would carry a predetermined end date rather than an open-ended settlement window. The firm is pursuing institutional buy-in ahead of a December rollout, though a confirmed date for the launch has yet to be announced.
