Nasdaq's venture arm has invested $100M in Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, at a $21B valuation. The deal, announced September 10, 2026, extends a partnership the two companies struck in March: Kraken will distribute Nasdaq's tokenized equities to its customers, with those tokens expected to launch in the second quarter of 2027.
The numbers
The last valuation we tracked for Kraken was $13.3B, set when Deutsche Börse bought roughly $200M of secondary shares in April 2026. That was itself a steep markdown from the $20B valuation attached to Kraken's $800M raise in late 2025. The Nasdaq investment at $21B reverses the April markdown and edges past the 2025 high: +58% versus the April mark, about +5% versus late 2025. Holding share count constant, the implied value per share rises by the same 1.58×. The caveat is size: $100M is under half a percent of the headline valuation, so one strategic buyer is setting the price for the whole company.
What changed
This is a strategic investment, not a broad priced round. Nasdaq is buying distribution for its tokenized-stock product, and Kraken gains a marquee exchange shareholder ahead of a listing. It is also the third time this year that a traditional exchange operator has taken a stake in a crypto exchange, after Intercontinental Exchange invested in OKX at $25B in March. Meanwhile, weaker crypto prices and trading volumes led Payward to push its IPO back; recent reporting points to the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest.
What this means for employees
If you hold Kraken options or RSUs, your headline paper value has recovered to roughly where it stood at the late-2025 round. Before you plan around it, three cautions. First, strategic investors often pay for commercial terms as well as equity, and usually buy preferred stock with protections your common shares lack, so the 409A value of common can sit well below $21B. Second, the April $13.3B secondary shows how far and how fast Kraken's mark can move with crypto sentiment. Third, with the IPO slipping into 2027, the only liquidity before then would be a company-run tender. Anyone weighing an early exercise should model both the $13.3B and $21B marks, not just the higher one.
Run your Kraken grant through the calculator at both the $21B Nasdaq mark and the $13.3B April secondary price, so you can see the range your equity actually sits in before making exercise or tax decisions.