The funding, which values Kraken at $20B, accelerates plans to integrate traditional markets with crypto infrastructure across multiple regions.
Updated Nov 18, 2025, 11:17 p.m. Published Nov 18, 2025, 10:58 p.m.
Crypto exchange Kraken has raised $800 million in fresh funding, including $200 from investment from Citadel Securities, to accelerate its efforts to bring traditional financial markets onto blockchain infrastructure, the company said Tuesday.
The round was split across two tranches, with the main one led by institutional investors including Jane Street, DRW Venture Capital, HSG, Oppenheimer Alternative Investment Management and Tribe Capital. A follow-on $200 million investment came from market-making giant Citadel Securities, valuing Kraken at $20 billion.
Kraken, founded in 2011, operates a regulated trading platform offering spot and derivatives markets, tokenized assets, staking, and payment services. Its infrastructure is vertically integrated — covering custody, clearing, matching, settlement and wallet services — which allows the company to roll out new financial products quickly while maintaining compliance standards.
“Our focus has always been straightforward: to create a platform where anyone can trade any asset, anytime, anywhere,” said Arjun Sethi, Kraken’s co-CEO. He added that the involvement of firms like Citadel Securities and Jane Street reflects confidence in Kraken’s strategy and its infrastructure-first approach.
The raise marks a turning point for the firm, which has taken in just $27 million in primary capital until now. Despite minimal outside funding, Kraken generated $1.5 billion in revenue in 2024 and had already surpassed that total by Q3 2025.
Over the last year, Kraken has pushed deeper into multi-asset trading. It acquired NinjaTrader to launch U.S. futures trading, began offering tokenized equities, and rolled out KRAK — a global app for payments, savings and investing.
Citadel Securities President Jim Esposito called Kraken a key player in “the next chapter of digital innovation in markets.” The firm plans to work with Kraken on liquidity provision and risk management — areas where Citadel Securities has helped shape traditional markets over the last two decades.
With the new funding, Kraken said it will expand into Latin America, Asia Pacific and EMEA. It also plans to add more trading tools, institutional products, staking solutions, and payment services, aiming to meet rising demand for regulated access to digital and tokenized assets.
AI Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.
More For You
Protocol Research: GoPlus Security
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence’s Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Asia Morning Briefing: BTC Market Stress Reveals a New Crypto Order
Market observers note stable XRP/BTC and ETH/BTC ranges and an unusually balanced top-20 ranking, signaling fundamentals-driven dispersion rather than a broad alt season.
What to know:
- Bitcoin’s recent slide under $90,000 did not trigger the usual deep correction behavior, indicating a shift from a liquidity-driven to a fundamentals-driven market.
- Tokens with clear utility, staking, or institutional demand are maintaining their value, while speculative assets face pressure.
- Asia-Pacific markets showed mixed results, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 rising 0.5% despite Wall Street’s tech-led declines.
