Nasdaq puts $100M into Kraken parent Payward at $21B

Nasdaq’s venture arm is investing $100 million in Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, valuing Payward at $21 billion and expanding a partnership that began in March. The deal has not been announced publicly by either firm.

The funding comes from Nasdaq’s venture investment unit and gives Nasdaq a stake in a company that issues tokenized versions of listed shares.

Nasdaq is working with Payward to enable trading of equity tokens — digital records of shares held on a blockchain that can be transferred outside normal market hours — and is using Payward’s existing systems rather than building new infrastructure.

Payward operates xStocks, a service that issues blockchain versions of listed shares. Kraken said xStocks had processed more than $25 billion in trades through March. Under the partnership, Payward handles settlement for Nasdaq’s equity token trades and screens users of those tokens.

Payward filed confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in November 2025 and has delayed its public listing twice. The company currently aims for an initial public offering in the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest. The new funding reduces immediate pressure to list.

The $21 billion valuation is a modest increase from the $20 billion price set in November 2025, when market-making and trading firms including Jane Street, DRW Venture Capital and Citadel Securities took part in a funding round.

Payward’s most recent quarterly results showed revenue growth of 17 percent while profit declined substantially.

Nasdaq’s investment represents a strategic stake in a technology provider it plans to rely on for tokenized equity products rather than an acquisition of another crypto exchange. The terms and timing of the transaction remain private.

Tokenizing shares requires coordination among trading venues, custody providers and regulators. Industry observers note that having an operational platform already in place can accelerate product rollouts compared with developing new systems from scratch.