Nasdaq to Invest $100 Million in Kraken Parent as the Two Push Toward Tokenized Stocks
The exchange operator’s venture arm is putting money behind Payward as they build shared infrastructure for Nasdaq Equity Tokens, which the companies aim to launch in the second quarter of 2027. A reported $21 billion valuation for Payward has not been confirmed by either company.
NEW YORK — Nasdaq said Thursday that its venture arm, Nasdaq Ventures, has agreed to invest $100 million in Payward Inc., the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, deepening a partnership the two firms had already been building around tokenized securities infrastructure. Nasdaq’s announcement did not state a valuation for Payward; a figure of roughly $21 billion has circulated in outlets citing people familiar with the deal, but neither company has confirmed it on the record.
The stated purpose of the expanded partnership is market infrastructure for what Nasdaq is calling Nasdaq Equity Tokens — a tokenized representation of listed equities that the companies say they intend to bring to market in the second quarter of 2027. That timeline places the actual product roughly nine months out from this week’s announcement, which is a useful marker for readers trying to separate the capital commitment happening now from the product that capital is meant to build.
Tokenized equities have been a recurring subject of exchange-industry experimentation for several years, with the pitch generally resting on faster settlement, fractional ownership and composability with on-chain finance. What has been harder to demonstrate at any exchange, including this one, is investor demand and regulatory clearance at a scale that would matter to Nasdaq’s core listings business — a tokenized security still has to clear the same securities-law framework as the underlying share, regardless of what rail it settles on.
For Kraken, an exchange that has built its business primarily on crypto-asset trading, a deepened relationship with a traditional exchange operator is notable positioning ahead of whatever public-market plans the company may have, though Payward has not announced an IPO timeline in connection with this transaction. Nasdaq, for its part, gains an early foothold and equity-like exposure in a tokenization effort without having to build the underlying crypto-custody and settlement expertise from scratch.
The nine-month gap between this week’s capital commitment and the stated Q2 2027 product launch is the detail worth watching rather than dismissing. Partnerships of this kind are frequently announced well ahead of the infrastructure, regulatory clearances and market-maker participation that a live tokenized-equities venue actually requires, and the distance between an announced target date and an operating product has been the pattern this publication has flagged in similar infrastructure buildouts elsewhere in payments.