Kalshi wants to launch ‘perps’ tied to equity indexes

Prediction market platform Kalshi in a regulatory filing on Tuesday revealed it is seeking to launch perpetual futures tied to equity indexes. 

The filing with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is the latest move by the company to expand beyond just its prediction markets offerings, which started in late May when Kalshi first received approval for perpetual futures tied to cryptocurrencies.

Perpetual futures, colloquially known as “perps,” are futures-style contracts where there is no expiration and traders do not need to own the underlying asset. Contracts instead track the price of an asset continuously, with funding payments to keep the contract price aligned with that of the market.

Kalshi’s “US500” perp, according to the filing, would be tied to the MerQube U.S. Large Cap Index, which tracks the largest 500 companies listed and based in the U.S.

Last month, Kalshi filed with the CFTC a proposal to launch perps tied to precious metals, like gold and silver. In its filings on Tuesday, the company also sought regulatory approval for perps tied to industrial metal copper. 

Before Kalshi received regulatory approval a few months ago, perpetual futures were an asset class that was entirely offshore from the U.S. Kalshi said perps had over $90 trillion in global volume in 2025, and within a week of launch the company’s own perpetual futures crossed $1 billion in notional volume, CNBC previously reported. 

Stocks of exchanges like CME Group and CBOE Global Markets fell in early June on the heels of the approval of domestic perps, on worries that the asset could create increased competition for existing players with traditional futures contracts. CME sued the CFTC in federal court over its approval of the asset. 

Kalshi said it wanted to be seen as a full-fledged, multi-asset financial exchange at a June event launching its perps product.

“This is the next step towards building the largest exchange on the planet,” Kalshi engineer Lior Hirschfeld said during a presentation. 

But shares of traditional exchanges were higher on Tuesday in early trading. CME was up by 2%, while CBOE was rising by 0.8%.

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and a minority investment.