Kraken Parent Lands $100 Million Nasdaq Bet Before Planned IPO, But Why?
Nasdaq is investing $100 million in Payward, the father or mother firm of crypto alternate Kraken, in a deal that values the agency at $21 billion, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
The cash comes from Nasdaq’s enterprise funding arm and expands a partnership the 2 firms struck in March. Neither agency has introduced the deal publicly.
Why Nasdaq Is Buying Into Kraken Parent Payward
Nasdaq desires shares to commerce as tokens, which means digital data held on a blockchain that may change fingers outdoors regular alternate hours. Building that equipment from scratch takes years.
Payward already runs it. Its xStocks service, which points blockchain variations of listed shares, had processed greater than $25 billion in trades by March, in keeping with Kraken. Under the partnership, Payward settles Nasdaq’s fairness token trades and checks who’s utilizing them.
BeInCrypto reported on Sept. 2 that Kraken was quietly constructing a Wall Street crypto gateway with Nasdaq, the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse whereas stalling its personal itemizing. Nasdaq has now purchased a chunk of that gateway.
What the Money Does Not Buy
Nothing within the Bloomberg account quickens the preliminary public providing. Payward filed confidentially with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in November 2025, delayed twice, and now targets the second quarter of 2027 on the earliest.
Fresh money cuts the strain to listing. The $21 billion price ticket additionally marks a modest step up from the $20 billion valuation set in November 2025, when Jane Street, DRW Venture Capital and Citadel Securities backed the corporate.
That issues greater than the dimensions of the cheque. Payward’s latest quarterly earnings confirmed income climbing 17% whereas revenue collapsed. A backer whose personal product is determined by Payward’s plumbing, from tokenized London stocks to US fairness tokens, carries weight no bizarre investor brings.
Nasdaq isn’t betting on one other crypto alternate. It is paying to personal a part of the provider it plans to depend upon.
The publish Kraken Parent Lands $100 Million Nasdaq Bet Before Planned IPO, But Why? appeared first on BeInCrypto.