Nasdaq invests $100M in Kraken parent, setting firm at $21B valuation
Nasdaq Ventures committed $100 million to Payward, the parent of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken. This deal values the company at $21 billion and involves using Nasdaq surveillance technology for tokenized assets.
Payward announced a $100 million investment from Nasdaq on Thursday. The deal places Payward's valuation at $21 billion. People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Nasdaq Venture Capital funded the round. As part of the agreement, Kraken will launch tokenized versions of Nasdaq-listed stocks on its platform. Payward agreed to adopt Nasdaq surveillance technology across crypto, equity, futures, and options venues. The exchange operator has integrated this technology for monitoring markets. This transaction follows earlier plans by Nasdaq to acquire Level Markets and expand into always-on trading environments. The partnership expands upon a collaboration first announced in March. In other related activity, Kraken partnered with the London Stock Exchange to begin offering 24/5 trading of UK equity tokenized products starting in 2027. Deutsche Börse previously invested $200 million in Payward earlier this year. Nasdaq had filed a tokenization proposal with the Securities and Exchange Commission one year ago.
