This Week's Big Story
Kalshi is now processing over $1 billion in weekly trading volume — up more than 1,000% from last year. The company is CFTC-regulated, making it the only legal place in the US to trade on real-world events like Fed rate decisions and elections. That regulatory moat is what everyone else is fighting to replicate. They raised $1B in December at an $11B valuation.
The Funding Round Everyone Is Talking About
OpenAI closed the largest private funding round in history — $40B at a $300B valuation led by SoftBank. ChatGPT has 300M weekly active users on a path to $12B in revenue this year. What it signals is that the AI infrastructure race is nowhere near over.
One to Watch
Harvey AI raised $300M in 2025 at a $3B valuation. Used by Allen and Overy and PwC Legal to automate contract review and legal research. Legal is a $1 trillion industry barely touched by software. Harvey is changing that.
From the Database
Three companies worth watching — Groq ($2.8B) building chips that run AI 10-25x faster than GPUs. Parafin ($800M) with 400% volume growth powering capital for DoorDash merchants. Mercury ($3.5B) just applied for a national bank charter. Explore all 100+ at nextatlas.io.
See you next week. — Justin, NextAtlas