Nasdaq puts $100 million into Kraken's parent company
VC & Fundraising ·
Nasdaq's venture arm is putting $100 million into Payward, the entity behind Kraken, pushing the crypto exchange's parent to a $21 billion valuation.
The investment, first reported by Bloomberg and detailed by Decrypt, extends a partnership between Nasdaq and Payward that began in March. People familiar with the matter say the funding is meant to speed up work on new market infrastructure covering the trading, settlement and custody of tokenized equities, according to The Block.
The $21 billion figure marks a jump from Payward's prior benchmark: one account in the same cluster of reporting notes the new price tag is 58% above the valuation Deutsche Börse used when it invested in April, suggesting the company's worth has climbed sharply in less than half a year even as broader crypto fundraising has slowed.
Multiple outlets converged on the same terms within a short span, with seven distinct sources tracking the deal, indicating the transaction moved from private negotiation to public confirmation quickly rather than leaking piecemeal. The consistency across reports — the $100 million check size, the $21 billion valuation, and the March partnership as the deal's origin point — points to a well-sourced disclosure rather than a rumor still taking shape.
What remains unclear from the current reporting is the precise mechanics of the tokenized-equities buildout itself: neither the funding round nor the partnership expansion has been detailed in terms of timeline, product scope, or which markets or asset classes the joint infrastructure will initially target. It is also not yet specified how Nasdaq's equity stake fits alongside Deutsche Börse's earlier investment or whether additional strategic partners are expected to join the arrangement as Payward's valuation continues to move.