S&P Global has taken an equity stake in Kaiko, leading a strategic investment that extends the crypto data firm’s Series B to $110 million.
It did not come alone. Nasdaq Ventures, BNP Paribas, Royal Bank of Canada, Broadridge, Coinbase Ventures, DRW, and Susquehanna joined the round—and all of them have taken seats on a working group, chaired by Kaiko, that will shape data standards for tokenized markets.
The investment converts a commercial partnership into an ownership position two weeks after the pair launched a co-branded index suite and six months after they tokenized a fixed income benchmark together.
S&P Global announced the investment on September 14, made through S&P Global Ventures as part of Kaiko’s Series B-2 extension.
Who Is In
The round also drew Bpifrance, the Canton Foundation, and Stellar, with existing shareholders Anthemis, Point Nine, and Revaia participating in the extension.
The list spans functions rather than a single sector: index and ratings in S&P, exchange operation in Nasdaq, banking in BNP Paribas and RBC, post-trade processing in Broadridge, market making in DRW and Susquehanna, crypto exchange in Coinbase, blockchain development in Stellar and the Canton Foundation, and state investment in Bpifrance.
Kaiko chief executive Ambre Soubiran said the investors work across pricing, trading, capital allocation, and blockchain development and described them as partners rather than shareholders.
“As digital assets accelerate, S&P Global is investing for the future, and this investment underscores that conviction,” said Cathy Clay, CEO, S&P Dow Jones Indices.
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The Working Group Is the Structural Part
Participating institutions have joined a Strategic Industry Working Group chaired by Kaiko, which the company says gives them a direct role in shaping the data and infrastructure used to bring tokenized products into production.
That is a standards body forming around a vendor its members now own part of. For firms that will have to price, clear and report tokenized instruments, sitting inside the group determines what the reference data looks like before the products reach production.
Joe Bonnaud, head of global markets EMEA at BNP Paribas, said demand for robust market infrastructure and trusted data will become paramount as tokenized finance evolves, and that the bank looked forward to the industry dialogues Kaiko is leading.
Kaiko Bought Its Largest US Competitor
The round follows two acquisitions. Kaiko purchased Cometh, a DeFi infrastructure provider regulated as a crypto-asset service provider under MiCA and authorized by France’s AMF, and Amberdata—which the company describes as its former largest US competitor.
Both expand its American footprint and its regulatory perimeter. Kaiko holds SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 attestations from a Big Four firm, and Kaiko Indices is authorized as a benchmark administrator under the EU Benchmark Regulation and listed in ESMA’s register, adhering to IOSCO’s principles for financial benchmarks.
The company says it covers more than 150 exchanges and protocols and serves over 250 financial firms, institutions, and regulators.
What the Two Have Already Built
The investment converts a commercial relationship into ownership. In March, S&P Dow Jones Indices and Kaiko tokenized the iBoxx US Treasuries Index, which S&P describes as the first time a major index provider made a financial benchmark available as a native digital asset, with index data distribution, licensing, and permissioning embedded.
In early September the two launched the S&P Kaiko Digital Asset Indices, a co-branded suite combining S&P’s index franchise with Kaiko’s data. Kaiko is separately collaborating with Bloomberg on on-chain data access for tokenized markets and was named a finalist in Swift’s 2026 hackathon.
Cathy Clay, chief executive of S&P Dow Jones Indices, said Kaiko’s strength in crypto market data builds foundational transparency for the digital asset ecosystem and supports bridging traditional and decentralized finance.
S&P’s Digital Asset Track Record
The investment sits at the end of a five-year sequence the company has documented itself.
S&P Dow Jones Indices launched its first cryptocurrency index series in May 2021, followed by a dedicated DeFi group under Chief DeFi Officer Chuck Mounts in May 2022 and a DeFi-focused benchmark in January 2023. S&P Global Ratings introduced its Stablecoin Stability Assessment framework in December 2023, scoring stablecoins from 1 to 5 on their ability to hold a peg. It now assesses ten, including USDT, USDC, and Sky Protocol’s USDS and DAI.
Between February and September 2025, the ratings arm assigned its first ratings to tokenized treasury funds, covering products from Janus Henderson, Wellington, and OpenEden. In July 2025 it licensed the S&P 500 to Centrifuge for fund tokenization, and Centrifuge launched SPXA, the first licensed S&P 500 index fund token, that September.
In August 2025, S&P assigned the first credit rating to a DeFi protocol, giving Sky Protocol a B- with a stable outlook, citing centralization and liquidity risks. In October 2025 it began publishing its stablecoin assessments on-chain through Chainlink, deployed on Base.
What It Signals
The pattern across those moves is a ratings and index business extending its existing products into digital assets rather than building separate ones—stablecoins scored like credits, benchmarks licensed for tokenized funds, and indices distributed on-chain.
The Kaiko investment follows that logic. S&P has the brand and the methodology; Kaiko supplies the market data those products need for assets that trade continuously across venues S&P does not cover.
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