Kalshi is a smaller company than many expect. Most of its 200 employees work in an open-plan office in Manhattan’s meatpacking district. They don’t even take up a full floor of the building.

But Kalshi and other prediction market operators like Polymarket seem ubiquitous these days.

They are major sponsors of sporting events. Media outlets incorporate their data into coverage about politics, financial markets and more. The sites allow users to wager on the likelihood of all manner of events: the final score of a soccer match, the outcome of clinical drug trials and what words President Trump will say in a speech.

Kalshi, which opened to the public in 2021, was founded in 2018 by a pair of recent M.I.T. graduates: Tarek Mansour, who acts as chief executive; and Luana Lopes Lara, the chief operating officer. In May, the company raised funds that valued it at $22 billion. Mr. Mansour, who grew up in Lebanon, and Ms. Lopes Lara, who is from Brazil, are now both billionaires at 30 years old, according to Forbes calculations.

In the United States, prediction markets are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which authorizes them to operate across the country, unlike gambling companies that must seek state-by-state approval. The C.F.T.C. has recently shrunk its work force, dialed back enforcement and helped boost prediction markets, according to an investigation by The New York Times.

The industry’s rapid growth has attracted a wide array of investors and new players, including those with ties to the Trump family. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket and a paid adviser to Kalshi. Others eyeing entry into prediction markets include Mark Zuckerberg of Meta.

Some lawmakers and regulators assert that prediction markets are just gambling by another name. And there is the risk of insider trading: In the past few months, a U.S. soldier who helped capture Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela made related bets on Polymarket, and a White House teleprompter operator wagered on what Mr. Trump would say in speeches on Kalshi.

Letitia James, the New York attorney general, recently sued Kalshi, accusing it of operating illegally and sidestepping the state’s laws on gambling. Kalshi called the move “political theater” and said that states lacked the authority to shut the company down. More than a dozen states have introduced legislation this year to regulate prediction markets.

During its last fund-raising round, Kalshi said that its annualized trading volume had ballooned to $178 billion. For Mr. Mansour, markets that allow people to put money behind their predictions provide a valuable service to help “calibrate” — a word he uses often — the world in which “there’s an abundance of information but a scarcity of truth.”

This interview has edited and condensed for clarity.

You have said that one of your visions for Kalshi is to “financialize everything.” Some people consider that dystopian. Why is it a good thing?

I think people took that statement out of context.

The beauty of prediction markets is they take a debate that is subjective, emotional, partisan and put it in a place where it’s mathematical, objective and the incentive structure is very clear. If you do research, you analyze things, you’re smart and you put in the effort to truth-seek, you will probably get rewarded by making money. If you have an opinion that’s too biased, non-calibrated, too partisan or too polarized, you probably will lose money.

There’s a certain elegance in markets where you know for sure why someone is having the opinion that they have. They’re truth-seeking because they are trying to make money.

Right now a lot of people go to Kalshi for sports. What’s the breakdown of event contracts on sports versus everything else?

Yes, people like to trade on sports. Our users are people who like math, they like economics, they like trading. They like thinking about probabilities and what’s happening, what impacts probability, what are the different factors. Sports is an amazing training ground for something like that.

And the numbers?

It was like 95 percent last year. I think it’s closer to two-thirds today. Sports has a lot of events per week. There are not hundreds of political races every week.

Sports has been an incredible enabler of liquidity and growth in all the other categories, like crypto and politics and finance and economics. They’re all growing significantly faster than they were before sports.

Where is politics at right now?

The big markets do $50 to $100 million of volume. Those markets have gotten significantly more calibrated and significantly more accurate because of all the growth.

To come back to the “financialize everything” point, what’s next?

Everything within limits, like with all things. Everything in moderation.

Kalshi is a pro-regulation company. We’ve always tried to do things the right way. When we started, we spent years getting ready, figuring out what markets should be listed, getting the right licenses at the federal level, which was very difficult. We were 22-year-olds. We spent the first four years of our careers working with lawyers and trying to regulate this thing.

Are you happy with regulation now? Or are there holes in it?

There are holes in all regulations at all points in time where there is novelty and innovation. Otherwise, in this country we’re probably not doing new things, right?

I have to ask about your strained relationship with Shayne Coplan, the head of Polymarket. Let’s clear it up.

People like tension. It’s not a competitive thing. There are other incredibly competent companies in the space that I think honestly more about: Robinhood, CME, Coinbase, Interactive Brokers, the banks and Zuck are looking at prediction markets. Those are very worthy adversaries, and it excites me to be competing against people like that.

The difference with Poly is we have a philosophical misalignment.

Which is?

The philosophical line is the regulated or unregulated approach to the business. I think they have not established the right guardrails around the marketplace. I think that’s bad for them long term. It’s bad for the industry long term.

How can people trust that the regulation that Kalshi is pushing for is in customers’ best interest?

The growth of the industry is indicative of people trusting because they’re trusting us with their money. If people are getting hurt, if they’re not trusting it, they’re going to stop using it and tell other people.

How concentrated is the trading volume for your most ardent users versus everyone else?

I don’t have the exact percentage, but there’s a skew. There are people that come in a few times a month. There are people who do it as a hobby or a part-time job. There are also people who do it full-time. They are super-forecasters.

Super-forecasters are discerning a copious amount of research. Those guys are not like 2 percent of volume; they’re 70 to 80 percent of volume.

Our best inflation forecaster is a random guy in Kansas. Our best political forecasters — if you look at the top 10 — are random people. Non-Wall Street, nonelite backgrounds; some of them are blue-collar workers and it’s amazing.

What is Kalshi doing to guard against insider trading?

We verify everybody when they come on board. We know who they are, and that helps us figure out when something bad or something weird happens. No. 2, we have built systems the same as New York Stock Exchange to flag suspicious patterns. No. 3, we have a comprehensive program of transparency so all of our trade data is public.

It’s a blessing and a curse. The curse is that everyone can see it, so people are always raising their arms up and saying, “There’s insider trading.” The blessing is people are raising their arms up and saying, “there’s insider trading.” If people want to commit a crime, they’re committing it in broad daylight.

Insider trading is interesting. In a weird way, insider trading actually makes the markets more efficient. The reason we’re against it is it creates an unfair marketplace, so people stop trading.

There are economists who argue that, actually, insider trading should make you trust the forecasts more because it makes them more accurate.

Your company is growing fast. How do you balance broader leadership with staying focused on building the company?

Luana and I work very, very hard. We just work longer hours. We work on weekends. I think you can always make time.

Once you’re in a good place, there’s a playbook that other people can take over. She runs the company internally and I take care of a lot of the external stuff. That model has been working for us quite well.

At Kalshi, we’re very flat. That helps us move fast and get things done. There are not a lot of layers of management where the managers are getting the credit for work. The people doing the work are the leaders. That creates a sense of urgency and motivation.

Where does your management style come from?

Lebanese people spike insanely high in adaptability. It’s a volatile place. The thing it put in me is that the world is very chaotic.

I think we’re at a point where things are changing every two weeks with A.I. It’s so crazy right now. You have to build an organization that fits that frequency of your information. So we try not to have any structure.

We reassemble ourselves, no matter what, on the most important challenges or the new opportunities.

Staying with your upbringing, what advice did you take away from your parents?

My mom’s biggest one is always give 120 percent. Always go above and beyond. The results really lie in that last 20 percent.

It’s time for the lightning round. What’s a trade on Kalshi that’s recently piqued your interest?

The price of compute.

What is your favorite interview question for job candidates?

What do you think of Elon Musk?

What’s your most contrarian take?

I don’t think executives are behind the performance of any great company.

Do you consider yourself a manager?

No, I’m incapable of managing.

What’s the latest question you asked A.I.?

I asked ChatGPT about the midterms — the odds for Democrats in 2028, because now it’s surfacing Kalshi data.

What’s the worst piece of advice given to young founders today?

The worst advice that most people get is that you should go and seek out a bunch of advice. There’s really no recipe to any of this stuff.

People are over-reliant on advice, and people love giving advice because it makes them feel smart and powerful. It’s usually mostly trash.

So, then, what advice do you give young founders?

I say don’t take my advice as gospel. Try as much as you can to take as much risk as you can.

Best advice for meetings?

Try not to meet.