S&P Global Leads $110M Kaiko Round as Wall Street Goes Onchain

Nasdaq, BNP Back Kaiko to Expand Tokenization Push

Wall Street is putting money behind the rails of tokenized finance.

S&P Global led a strategic investment in crypto data provider Kaiko, extending the company’s Series B funding to $110 million. The round also included BNP Paribas, Nasdaq Ventures, Royal Bank of Canada, Coinbase Ventures, DRW, Susquehanna, Broadridge, Stellar and Bpifrance, among others.

Kaiko previously raised $53 million in a 2022 Series B led by Eight Roads.

The investor list is arguably more important than the headline number. It spans pricing, banking, trading, market infrastructure and blockchain development, showing how broadly traditional finance is preparing for assets that trade and settle around the clock.

Wall Street Is Funding the Rails, Not Just the Tokens

Kaiko provides institutional market data across more than 150 exchanges and protocols. Its newer infrastructure business delivers data directly to smart contracts while converting blockchain activity into standardized information that banks and asset managers can use for valuation, trading and risk management.

That capability becomes increasingly important as Treasury bills, money-market funds, equities and bonds move onto blockchain networks.

“These are partners, not just shareholders,” Kaiko CEO Ambre Soubiran said in the announcement. “Together we will define how institutional money moves onchain.”

Participants are also joining a Kaiko-led Strategic Industry Working Group to help shape data standards for tokenized markets.

S&P Global Sees Data as the Trust Layer

S&P Global’s involvement provides another sign that established financial-data companies expect crypto infrastructure to become part of mainstream capital markets.

“Kaiko’s strength in crypto market data and analytics builds foundational transparency for the digital-asset ecosystem,” said Cathy Clay, CEO of S&P Dow Jones Indices.

BNP Paribas executive Joe Bonnaud similarly pointed to growing demand for trusted data, transparency and market infrastructure as tokenized finance develops.

Kaiko has been expanding quickly. It recently acquired DeFi infrastructure provider Cometh and rival data company Amberdata. It has also launched digital-asset indices with S&P and is collaborating with Bloomberg on onchain data for tokenized markets.

What the $110 Million Bet Means for Crypto

The investment suggests the institutional tokenization story is entering a different phase.

Banks no longer need only custody and trading venues. They need benchmark-quality prices, compliance-ready data, risk analytics and infrastructure capable of operating 24/7. That creates a potentially valuable layer between blockchains and traditional finance.

For crypto markets, the implication is broader than Kaiko itself. If tokenized securities continue expanding, demand should rise for regulated data providers, oracle infrastructure, settlement networks and blockchains capable of handling institutional activity.

The $110 million round does not guarantee that tokenization will scale. But when firms including S&P Global, Nasdaq, BNP Paribas and RBC collectively fund the data layer, it suggests Wall Street increasingly views onchain markets as infrastructure to prepare for, not a trend to watch from the sidelines.