Nasdaq Invests $100 Million in Kraken Parent Payward
The deal fits Nasdaq’s plan for tokenized stocks and gives Kraken parent Payward more weight, while an IPO is still only on the table for 2027 at the earliest.
Key Takeaways
- Nasdaq is investing $100 million in Payward, Kraken’s parent company, valuing the company at $21 billion.
- The partnership focuses on tokenized stocks, with Payward handling settlement for Nasdaq’s equity token trades.
- Payward’s planned IPO remains separate and is now set for the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest.
Nasdaq is investing $100 million (€85.8 million) in Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, in a deal that values the company at $21 billion (€18 billion). According to Bloomberg, the investment fits into a broader partnership around tokenized stocks, while Payward itself is still moving toward an IPO.
Tokenized Stocks Take Center Stage
Nasdaq wants to trade stocks as tokens, meaning as digital records on a blockchain that can also move outside normal market hours. Building that from scratch takes years, and that is exactly where Payward’s value lies for the exchange group. Kraken says its xStocks service, which issues blockchain versions of listed stocks, had already processed more than $25 billion (€21.5 billion) in trading by March.
Under the partnership, Payward handles settlement for Nasdaq’s equity token trades and checks who uses those products. That means Nasdaq is not just buying access to technology, but also to the infrastructure needed to make tokenized stocks work within existing market structures. In March 2026, the SEC approved a Nasdaq proposal to trade certain stocks and ETFs in tokenized form, further legitimizing that development within U.S. market infrastructure.
IPO Remains Separate
The investment does not speed up Payward’s planned IPO. The company filed confidential documents with the U.S. regulator SEC in November 2025, delayed that step twice after that, and is now aiming for the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest.
The new $21 billion (€18 billion) valuation is slightly above the $20 billion (€17.2 billion) from November 2025, when investors including Jane Street, DRW Venture Capital, and Citadel Securities came in. For Payward, the extra funding does reduce the pressure to go public quickly, while Nasdaq is making a deeper commitment to the company behind the technology.
Why This Matters for Europe
For European crypto and market watchers, this deal shows how close crypto infrastructure and traditional exchanges are getting. The partnership fits into a broader move in which established financial firms use blockchain to modernize existing market processes. That could matter for how tokenized stocks and other investment products are later offered or settled outside the U.S. The partnership between Kraken and LSEG also shows that the exchange group has been pushing tokenized stocks and settlement outside the U.S. for some time.
