S&P Global Leads Kaiko’s $110 Million Institutional Funding Round
Banks, exchanges and market-data groups are backing Kaiko as tokenised markets increase demand for regulated digital-asset data.
Crypto market-data provider Kaiko has extended its Series B financing to $110 million in a strategic round led by S&P Global. BNP Paribas, Nasdaq, Royal Bank of Canada, French public investor Bpifrance and Susquehanna also participated, bringing together several institutions that sit at different points in the financial-data and trading chain.
Kaiko was founded in France in 2014 and is now based in New York. It collects and normalises information from more than 150 exchanges and blockchain protocols. The company says the capital will strengthen its regulated data infrastructure and expand products for digital assets and tokenised markets.
The financing is notable less for its absolute size than for the investor list. S&P Global is a major provider of benchmarks, ratings and market intelligence. Nasdaq operates exchanges and sells technology to market venues. The bank investors serve institutional clients that increasingly need consistent pricing, reference data, risk measures and compliance records for digital assets.
Data becomes critical infrastructure
Crypto markets trade continuously across venues with different rule books, liquidity profiles and technical standards. That fragmentation makes basic questions difficult: which price is representative, how much volume is reliable, whether a token can be valued during market stress and how an institution should document best execution.
Tokenisation raises the stakes. A token representing a bond, fund interest or share may settle on blockchain infrastructure, but it still needs corporate-action data, valuation methods, identifiers and links to legal ownership. Institutions cannot scale those products using dashboards designed only for retail crypto speculation.
Kaiko's opportunity is to become part of the control layer connecting onchain markets with conventional risk systems. That includes real-time feeds, historical data, indices and analytics that can be audited by regulated firms. The challenge is that incumbent data groups, exchanges and blockchain analytics companies are all competing for the same role.
The presence of strategic investors creates commercial opportunities but also potential conflicts. Customers need confidence that methodologies remain independent and that no venue or investor receives preferential treatment. Kaiko will also have to keep pace with new networks while maintaining consistent coverage when exchanges fail, assets fork or trading becomes disorderly.
What the round does not show
Kaiko did not disclose a new valuation, revenue, profitability or the precise amount added in this extension. The $110 million figure describes the enlarged Series B rather than necessarily a single new cash injection. Investors therefore cannot infer a valuation multiple or the company's cash runway from the announcement alone.
The broader digital-asset market has retreated from its late-2025 peak, but institutional tokenisation projects continue. That divergence supports infrastructure providers whose revenue depends on data subscriptions and market integration rather than token prices alone. It does not remove cyclical risk: lower volumes, consolidation among exchanges or delayed regulation can slow client spending.
Why it matters
Financial markets only become institutional when participants can price, reconcile and supervise them consistently. Kaiko's investor group signals that established finance increasingly views digital-asset data as a strategic input, not a niche research product.
For banks and asset managers, better data can reduce operational and valuation risk. For issuers, it can improve distribution and credibility. For regulators, it can make market surveillance more effective. The unresolved question is whether independent specialists such as Kaiko can retain control of the data layer as large exchanges and financial-information groups build competing products.