Nasdaq Invests $100 Million in Kraken Parent Payward for Tokenized Equities Push

Nasdaq Ventures has agreed to invest $100 million in Payward, the parent company of Kraken, as part of their collaboration on tokenized equities and digital market infrastructure. This investment values Payward at a staggering $21 billion, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg.

The partnership between Nasdaq and Payward aims to develop infrastructure linking regulated equity markets with blockchain networks. Kraken will make digital representations of stocks traded on Nasdaq available to users on its platform, expanding access to tokenized equities.

Nasdaq has been actively pursuing changes to its own market infrastructure. It filed a proposal with the SEC in September 2025 seeking to enable securities to trade in tokenized form and recently struck a deal to buy LeveL Markets, furthering its efforts to enable trading beyond conventional market hours.