S&P Global leads Kaiko round as Wall Street buys into the data layer of tokenised markets
Kaiko's Series B now totals $110m, with S&P Global, BNP Paribas, Nasdaq and RBC on the register. The incumbents are paying for a seat at the table where tokenised market standards will be set.
Kaiko, the Paris-based provider of digital asset market data, said on Monday, September 14, that S&P Global has led a strategic investment that extends its Series B to $110 million. The investment was made through S&P Global Ventures. Joining it were BNP Paribas, Bpifrance, Broadridge, the Canton Foundation, Coinbase Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Nasdaq Ventures, Royal Bank of Canada, Stellar and Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, alongside existing shareholders Anthemis, Point Nine and Revaia. Neither the valuation nor the size of individual cheques was disclosed.
The headline figure is modest by the standards of this year's funding rounds. The cap table is not. A global index and ratings group, a large European bank, a Canadian bank, an exchange operator, a post-trade processor, a trading firm and two blockchain networks have bought into the same data company at the same time. That is a statement about where established finance thinks the value in tokenised markets will sit: not only in the tokens themselves, but in the prices, reference rates and records that every participant must agree on.
What was announced
Kaiko's original Series B, led by Eight Roads in June 2022, raised $53 million. The new total of $110 million is cumulative, which implies that the extension brought in roughly $57 million of fresh capital, although the company has not confirmed that split. The money is earmarked for two lines of business. The first is Kaiko's established market data service, which covers more than 150 exchanges and protocols. The second is a newer data infrastructure offering for on-chain capital markets: delivering market data to smart contracts, turning on-chain financial activity into standardised off-chain records, and supporting confidential valuation and analytics.
The participating institutions have also joined a Strategic Industry Working Group chaired by Kaiko, intended to shape the data and infrastructure used to take tokenised products into production. Kaiko's chief executive, Ambre Soubiran, described the investors as "partners, not just shareholders." S&P Global framed the deal as a further expansion of an existing alliance and said Kaiko serves more than 250 financial firms, institutions and regulators.
A partnership that keeps deepening
The investment did not come out of nowhere. On September 1, S&P Dow Jones Indices and Kaiko folded their crypto index businesses into a single co-branded suite, the S&P Kaiko Digital Asset Indices. At launch it covered more than 4,000 rates and indices. Kaiko supplies the data sourcing, calculation and connectivity, while S&P Dow Jones Indices handles benchmark administration, licensing and distribution. Existing exchange-traded products, futures, options and structured products that reference Kaiko rates can adopt the new brand. In March the two firms had already put the iBoxx U.S. Treasuries Index on a blockchain as a native digital asset.
Kaiko has also been buying. In May it acquired Cometh, a provider of decentralised finance infrastructure authorised by France's AMF as a crypto-asset service provider under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. In June it completed the purchase of Amberdata, a US data provider that Kaiko itself calls its former largest American competitor, adding derivatives analytics and the GVOL options platform. Terms were not disclosed for either deal.
Seen together, the sequence is clear. Kaiko has consolidated its own niche, attached itself to one of the two or three most trusted benchmark brands in finance, and now invited that brand and a cross-section of its likely customers onto the shareholder register.
Why incumbents want the data layer
Tokenisation has moved well beyond bitcoin. Banks and asset managers are issuing tokenised Treasury bills, money market funds, bonds and, increasingly, equities. All of these instruments need the same things their traditional versions need: reliable prices, independent reference rates, valuation for collateral and margin, and audit trails that regulators accept. The difference is that on-chain markets trade around the clock and settle in code, so the data must be continuous and machine-readable by smart contracts.
Whoever supplies that data becomes hard to displace. Index licensing is among the most durable businesses in finance precisely because switching benchmarks is costly once products, contracts and risk systems are built around them. S&P Global already monetises that position in conventional markets. By investing in Kaiko and sharing a brand with it, it is positioning to do the same as tokenised assets grow, without having to build crypto-native infrastructure from scratch.
For the other investors the logic is more defensive. Nasdaq, Broadridge, DRW, BNP Paribas and RBC all touch pricing, trading, clearing or custody. Membership of a working group that drafts data standards gives them influence over rules they will later have to follow. It also gives them early sight of a supplier they may come to depend on.
The regulatory moat
Kaiko has invested heavily in credentials that matter to institutional buyers. Kaiko Indices is authorised as a benchmark administrator under the EU Benchmarks Regulation and appears in the register kept by ESMA, the EU securities regulator. The company says it adheres to the IOSCO principles for financial benchmarks and holds SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 attestations. Through Cometh it now also has a MiCA licence.
This matters because the competitive field in crypto data has been crowded and price-sensitive. Regulation narrows it. A bank that wants to reference a crypto rate in a structured product, or an exchange that wants to list a futures contract on one, needs an administrator its supervisor will accept. Fewer providers can meet that bar, and Kaiko has spent the past year making sure it is one of them.
Our view
This is a small round with large implications. The incumbents of market infrastructure have concluded that tokenised finance will need a trusted data layer and that it is cheaper to own a piece of the leading independent provider than to fight it. For Kaiko, the stamp of S&P Global and a dozen strategic investors is worth more than the cash.
The risks are real. A cap table full of potential customers and competitors can turn a working group into a negotiation, and independence, which is Kaiko's selling point, is harder to defend when one of the world's largest index providers is both partner and shareholder. The undisclosed valuation also leaves outside investors unable to judge what was paid.
Founders building in tokenisation should take note: distribution and regulatory standing now matter more than technology alone. Investors should watch three things. Whether the working group produces standards that others adopt, whether S&P Kaiko indices win mandates from ETF issuers and exchanges, and whether S&P Global eventually seeks control.
Sources
- Business Wire via STT Info: S&P Global Leads Strategic Investment in Kaiko, Extending Series B to $110 Million
- S&P Global: S&P Global Leads Strategic Investment in Kaiko, Deepening Commitment to Digital Assets and On-chain Markets
- S&P Global: S&P Dow Jones Indices and Kaiko Introduce S&P Kaiko Digital Asset Indices
- Ledger Insights: S&P Global leads Kaiko funding extension, bringing Series B to $110 million
- Cryptoast: Kaiko étend sa série B à 110 millions de dollars
- FinTech Global: S&P Global leads Kaiko's $110m Series B extension
- Cointelegraph: Kaiko acquires Amberdata in blockchain data consolidation push
Filed under Fintech. Written by Invest Times Editorial under our editorial standards. Commentary and analysis for information only, not investment advice.
