Cantor Fitzgerald opens Kalshi event contracts to roughly 3,000 institutional clients
Cantor Fitzgerald will broker Kalshi's event contracts to roughly 3,000 institutional clients, the firms announced on August 19. Cantor acts as introducing broker for the CFTC-regulated exchange. Susquehanna will provide liquidity for large block trades. The partnership gives Kalshi distribution through a major Wall Street broker-dealer's client base. The arrangement targets professional investors with block-size trades beyond retail flows.
Kalshi gains a wholesale channel that retail competitors cannot easily replicate. Cantor's 3,000 institutional clients bring block-size capital that dwarfs retail app flows. Susquehanna's liquidity role means Kalshi skips building its own desk. Rival platforms now face a higher bar. Polymarket holds CFTC registration but lacks comparable broker-dealer distribution to traditional hedge funds and family offices.
DraftKings runs its own exchange but has no Wall Street introducing-broker channel. The split pressures both to secure similar partnerships or absorb steeper customer-acquisition costs. For Kalshi, the dual-track model strengthens its valuation pitch by proving revenue diversification before its funding round closes. Competitors without such integrations risk being confined to app-store economics while Kalshi collects wholesale fees on institutional volume.
Cantor now runs parallel institutional channels for Kalshi, one via its own introducing-broker desk and another through Apex for retail brokers, giving the exchange two distinct Wall Street distribution layers that no rival has matched.