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Wintermute Puts $1 Billion Into AI and Traditional Markets

The London trading firm wants to rely less on crypto and is expanding into stocks, commodities, and currency trading. Its U.S. broker-dealer status also opens the door to ETFs and options.

By Luc Vesters
• 3 min read
Wintermute Puts $1 Billion Into AI and Traditional Markets

Key Takeaways

  • Wintermute wants to invest about $1 billion in high-frequency trading and AI data center infrastructure over the next five years.
  • The company expects non-crypto revenue to make up more than 50% of total revenue by the end of 2027, up from about 10% now.
  • Wintermute is expanding into traditional markets and received broker-dealer status in the U.S., allowing it to trade stocks and stock options.

Crypto market maker Wintermute wants to invest about $1 billion (€0.9 billion) in high-frequency trading and AI data center infrastructure over the next five years. With that move, the London-based crypto firm is taking a major step toward stocks, commodities, and currency trading, while trying to make its revenue less dependent on crypto.

Revenue Shifts Toward Non-Crypto

According to a Bloomberg report, based on founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy, non-crypto should account for more than 50% of revenue by the end of 2027. Right now, that figure is still about 10%. Wintermute says it wants to fund the spending with retained earnings.

The timing is no coincidence. The crypto market has cooled off, and Wintermute saw its average daily trading volume fall this year to about $10 billion (€8.7 billion), down from $15 billion (€13 billion) in 2025. That came as Bitcoin dropped to about half of its October peak above $126,000 (€109,100).

More Focus on Infrastructure

The investment should help Wintermute compete with firms like Jane Street, Citadel Securities, and XTX Markets. The company wants to use the infrastructure to train quantitative models on large amounts of market data and to build more computing power, storage, and network capacity. Gaevoy said that competing in traditional markets takes more than just faster execution at the microsecond level.

That shift fits into a broader trend where crypto companies are broadening their businesses to become less exposed to volatility in the crypto market. For professional traders, the big takeaway is that high-frequency trading and AI infrastructure are increasingly coming together in the same market strategy, especially as established players keep pouring money into data centers. That is also visible at Nvidia, which is increasingly positioning AI compute as a financeable infrastructure product for Wall Street.

Wintermute Expands Further

In 2025, Wintermute was already trading exchange-traded funds and perpetual futures tied to real-world assets, and in March it added 24-hour exposure to West Texas Intermediate crude. In early 2026, the company also opened a prediction markets desk.

In addition, the U.S. arm received broker-dealer status last week. That allows Wintermute to trade stocks and stock options and act as an authorized participant for exchange-traded funds. In the first half of 2026, 72% of spot volume on the OTC desk came from institutional players, a record for the company.

Gaevoy also said Wintermute was profitable in 2025 and is expected to stay profitable this year, although he did not share figures. The company made $582 million in profit, according to Forbes during the 2021 crypto bull market.

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