Nasdaq Inc. announced on September 10 that Nasdaq Ventures will invest $100 million in Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken. The capital extends from Nasdaq’s venture arm and extends an existing tokenization partnership between the two companies.
Bloomberg earlier the same day reported the investment at a $21 billion valuation, citing people familiar with the matter. The $21 billion figure was not stated in Nasdaq’s press release.
Bloomberg first reported the deal on September 10. At $100 million against a $21 billion mark, the check represents a strategic stake rather than a large capital raise.
Extends a Partnership That Began in March
Payward and Nasdaq disclosed their working relationship earlier this year. On March 9, Payward said it would build an “equities transformation gateway” with Nasdaq, powered by its xStocks tokenized equities framework, to allow tokenized shares to move between permissioned institutional venues and public blockchain networks. Nasdaq’s own equity token design is targeted to become operational in the first half of 2027.
Nasdaq’s September 10 statement said the companies expect Nasdaq Equity Tokens to launch in the second quarter of 2027 and added a market-surveillance agreement.
Nine days after that partnership was announced, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which regulates American securities markets, approved Nasdaq’s rule change permitting the trading of certain listed stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in tokenized form.
The change, published under SEC Release No. 34-105047, allows eligible participants to opt into settling trades in Russell 1000 stocks and major index ETFs through a Depository Trust Company (DTC) pilot. The Crypto Times covered that decision in SEC Clears Nasdaq Plan to Bring Tokenized Stocks to Wall Street.
Nasdaq is not the only exchange operator now attached to Payward’s tokenization stack. On September 1, London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and Payward agreed to bring the 100 largest London-listed companies onto xStocks, with any listing on the LSE 24 venue subject to regulatory approval. That partnership was reported in London Stock Exchange Partners with Kraken Parent Payward on UK Stocks. Deutsche Boerse joined Payward’s cap table in April through a secondary share purchase.
Valuation Marks Do Not Line Up
The $21 billion figure attached to the Nasdaq investment sits above several other reference points on Payward.
Yahoo Finance’s private-company page for KRAK.PVT, sourced from Forge Global, listed an estimated valuation of about $10.77 billion and a Forge price of $33.09 as of September 9. Total capital raised was shown as roughly $965 million across five rounds, with the most recent recorded amount of $200 million dated November 18, 2025.
Deutsche Boerse’s April secondary purchase, in which the German exchange operator paid $200 million for about 1.5% of Payward, implied a valuation of about $13.3 billion. Payward did not receive those proceeds because the transaction was a secondary share sale.
Payward’s most recent widely cited primary round, disclosed in November 2025, closed $800 million at a $20 billion valuation and included a $200 million strategic investment from Citadel Securities.
Primary rounds, secondary sales and Forge prints measure different things. A primary round establishes headline valuation for capital going into the business, secondary sales reflect prices existing shareholders accept for their stock, and Forge prices come from ongoing private-market activity. Even accounting for those differences, the range between $10.8 billion and $21 billion remains wide.
Q2 Operating Results Frame the Business
Payward’s cleanest recent snapshot is its second-quarter shareholder letter, published on August 14. According to the company’s Q2 2026 financial highlights, adjusted revenue reached $508 million, up 17% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) was $23 million, down 71% from about $80 million in the same quarter a year earlier.
Total platform transaction volume was $310 billion, down 18% year over year, as spot crypto activity fell across the industry while equities and tokenized equities carried more of the mix. Asset-based and other revenue rose to 60% of the total, up from 55% a year earlier. Funded accounts grew 42% to 6.6 million, and assets on platform totaled $40 billion.
The Crypto Times examined those results in Kraken Parent Payward’s Q2 Profit Falls 71% YoY to $23M, Revenue Rises 17%.
The revenue mix aligns with the product set a stock-exchange operator would prioritize. It is also the mix that has not yet been tested through a public-company earnings cycle.
IPO Timeline Pushed Back
Payward confidentially filed a draft S-1 registration statement with the SEC in November 2025, paused the listing in March, and is now understood to be targeting a debut no earlier than the second quarter of 2027. The Crypto Times reported on the pause and the accompanying 150-person workforce reduction in Kraken Parent Payward Cuts 150 Jobs as IPO Plans Stay on Ice.
The company has continued to grow through acquisitions rather than wait for a public listing. It closed on derivatives platform Bitnomial for up to $550 million, which supplied the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)-regulated stack behind Kraken’s U.S. perpetual futures offering.
In May, it agreed to acquire stablecoin payments and card-issuance firm Reap Technologies for up to $600 million, covered by the Crypto Times in Kraken Parent Payward Signs $600M Deal to Acquire Reap Technologies. Several of those deals used the $20 billion primary mark as the reference price for the stock portion of the consideration.
xStocks, the framework central to Payward’s exchange partnerships, provides tokenized exposure to publicly traded equities, backed 1:1 by the underlying shares held in custody. In June, Payward extended it to allow tokenized U.S.-listed IPO allocations at the offering price for retail investors on Kraken and other xStocks Alliance platforms, as covered in Kraken Parent to Offer Tokenized US IPO Access for Retail Investors via xStocks.
The Nasdaq Composite closed September 9 at 26,253.34, down 0.64% on the day. That is the U.S. cash equity market that Nasdaq itself operates, not Payward. It remains relevant as backdrop because tokenized equity settlement flows only function while the underlying cash market stays liquid enough to hedge and settle against.
What the Reported Mark Does and Does Not Settle
The $21 billion figure attached to the Nasdaq check does not reconcile the $13.3 billion Deutsche Boerse secondary from April or the $10.8 billion Forge estimate on KRAK.PVT dated September 9. It does not reset the IPO calendar or address the year-over-year drop in adjusted EBITDA disclosed in Q2.
What it does confirm is that Nasdaq is willing to invest $100 million in a partner whose near-term contribution, from Nasdaq’s perspective, is settlement and distribution infrastructure for tokenized equities targeted at 2027. Until Payward lists, the different valuation references will continue to sit alongside one another without a single clearing price.
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