Nasdaq's venture arm invested $100M in Kraken parent Payward at a $21B valuation, expanding their tokenized equities partnership and adding market surveillance tech across Payward's venues.
Crypto & Tokenization News
Nasdaq's venture arm has agreed to invest $100 million in Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, the companies announced Sept. 10.
The investment values Payward at $21 billion, according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter. Nasdaq did not confirm the valuation figure directly.
The deal expands a partnership the two companies first announced in March 2026, when they agreed to build an equities transformation gateway linking regulated markets with blockchain networks. As part of the expanded arrangement, Kraken will offer tokenized versions of Nasdaq-listed stocks on its platform. Those tokens will carry the same voting rights as shares traded on the exchange, a feature that most existing tokenized equity products do not offer.
What Payward Gets From the Deal
Payward will also adopt Nasdaq's market surveillance technology across all of its trading venues, covering crypto, equities, tokenized equities, futures, and options. The two companies are advancing Nasdaq Equity Tokens (NETs), with a planned launch in Q2 2027. Payward's co-CEO Arjun Sethi said on-chain settlement removes the waiting period associated with traditional stock trade clearing, and described the next phase as putting tokenized Nasdaq equities on rails that do not close, with shareholder rights intact.
Nasdaq President Tal Cohen said the expanded relationship reflects confidence in Payward's ability to help build infrastructure that supports capital movement while maintaining trust and transparency. The tokenized stock market has been growing alongside these partnerships. According to data from RW(dot)xyz, the total distributed value of tokenized stocks currently stands at more than $2.9 billion, up 7.4% over the past month.
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A Year of Traditional Exchanges Buying Into Crypto
The Nasdaq investment is the third time in 2026 that an established exchange operator has taken a stake in a crypto exchange. In March, Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, invested in OKX at a $25 billion valuation, taking a board seat and agreeing to open NYSE tokenized equity markets to OKX's 120 million users. In April, Deutsche Börse invested $200 million in Payward, acquiring a 1.5% fully diluted stake.
Payward's valuation has shifted considerably across these transactions. The company raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation in November 2025 and used the same figure when it agreed to acquire derivatives exchange Bitnomial in April 2026. Deutsche Börse's April stake implied a valuation of approximately $13.3 billion by Bloomberg's calculation, making Nasdaq's $21 billion figure a significant step up in less than five months. Payward filed a confidential S-1 for a public listing in November 2025 but shelved those plans in March 2026, the same month Kraken became the first crypto firm to gain access to the Federal Reserve's core payments system.
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