Major financial players Apollo Global Management, Oppenheimer, Jane Street, and HSG — formerly Sequoia Capital China — have invested in crypto exchange Kraken’s September funding round that valued the company at $15 billion, according to two people familiar with the deal.
The $500 million fundraising, first reported by Fortune, marks one of the largest private rounds in the crypto sector this year. Reuters has now confirmed the participation of these heavyweight investors, signaling rising institutional confidence in digital assets amid a friendlier U.S. regulatory climate under President Donald Trump’s administration.
Other participants included Qube Research & Technologies, Kraken’s co-CEO Arjun Sethi, and Tribe Capital, a venture capital firm co-founded by Sethi. The round is seen as a precursor to Kraken’s initial public offering (IPO), expected to be filed confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) before year-end, with a potential listing in the first quarter of next year — though the timeline could be affected by the ongoing government shutdown.
The funding highlights the growing institutional embrace of crypto. Kraken, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has been expanding aggressively through acquisitions: it bought NinjaTrader, a retail futures trading platform, for $1.5 billion in May, and recently acquired Small Exchange from IG Group for $100 million, strengthening its U.S.-based derivatives business.
The move comes amid a wave of crypto IPOs this year from firms like Circle, Gemini, and Bullish, which have capitalized on renewed optimism in the digital asset market.
Institutional enthusiasm has also helped lift crypto prices, with Bitcoin up over 20% this year, reaching a record high above $126,000 in October.
The involvement of Wall Street and Asia’s top investors in Kraken’s latest round underlines a broader shift: crypto is no longer a fringe asset — it’s becoming part of the mainstream financial ecosystem.