Nasdaq invested $100 million in Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, in a deal that values the firm at $21 billion. The money comes from Nasdaq’s venture arm and expands a partnership from March, focused on the xStocks service that issues blockchain versions of listed shares and had processed over $25 billion in trades by March. The deal does not accelerate Payward’s IPO, with its confidential filing with the SEC in November 2025 delayed twice and now targeting Q2 2027 at the earliest. The investment gives Nasdaq ownership of the infrastructure it plans to rely on for its own tokenized equity trading strategy.
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