Nasdaq puts $100M into Kraken parent at $21B

Nasdaq's venture arm is putting $100 million into Payward, the parent of crypto exchange Kraken, at a $21 billion valuation. Decrypt reported the figures on 10 September 2026, citing Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter. The $100 million and $21 billion numbers travel with those unnamed sources.

The story is secondary reporting of a private investment, not a Nasdaq investor-relations press release, and the dollar figures are not taken from a public SEC exhibit.

The money extends a partnership struck in March. Kraken will distribute Nasdaq's tokenized stocks with the same voting rights as ordinary shares. Most tokenized equity products give holders price exposure only. Nasdaq's design, as Decrypt describes it, puts issuers at the center and builds a gateway with Kraken between regulated and on-chain venues.

The stake is the third major exchange-operator investment in a crypto exchange this year. Intercontinental Exchange invested in OKX in March at a $25 billion valuation. Deutsche Boerse paid $200 million for 1.5% of Payward in April, a slice Bloomberg calculated as about $13.3 billion. Nasdaq, per the same Bloomberg sources, plans its own token in the second quarter of next year.

Payward's marks have not sat still. It raised $800 million at $20 billion last November and reused that $20 billion figure in April when talking about a Bitnomial deal. The April Deutsche Boerse math and this $21 billion print do not match.

Payward filed a confidential S-1 in November, then shelved the listing in March. The same month, Decrypt says, Kraken became the first crypto firm granted access to the Federal Reserve's core payments system. That rail sits in the same settlement conversation as Visa's $20 billion stablecoin settlement run rate.

Voting rights on Nasdaq-tokenized stocks are the commercial design in the Decrypt report, not a filed listing term, until a joint announcement or registration statement lands. The April Boerse math at $13.3 billion, the November raise and April Bitnomial talk at $20 billion, and this Nasdaq print at $21 billion now sit on the same page.