Digital Asset Data Provider Kaiko Secures $110 Million Financing Led by S&P Global
According to Bloomberg, digital asset data provider Kaiko has completed a new round of financing led by S&P Global, bringing the total amount of this round (Series B extension) to $110 million.
The investors include a range of traditional financial players—market makers DRW Holdings and Susquehanna, banks Royal Bank of Canada and BNP Paribas, the venture arm of Nasdaq, infrastructure service provider Broadridge Financial Solutions, French national investment agency Bpifrance, as well as crypto-focused firms Coinbase Ventures, Canton Ventures (Canton Foundation), and blockchain company Stellar.
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Paris, Kaiko provides cryptocurrency market data, analytics, and index services to financial institutions and digital asset companies. It currently covers over 200 exchanges, more than 20 blockchains, and over 20,000 digital assets, serving more than 260 institutional clients globally with around 120 employees. Recently, it completed its fifth acquisition, having acquired U.S. derivatives analytics and on-chain data company Amberdata and crypto infrastructure provider Cometh.
S&P Global's investment aligns with its recent activities—earlier this year in March, the two companies jointly tokenized the iBoxx U.S. Treasury Index, becoming the first major index provider to issue a financial benchmark in the form of a native digital asset with embedded permission management features. In early September, they further launched the "S&P-Kaiko Digital Asset Index" series, combining S&P's index methodology with Kaiko's crypto market data.
The investors also formed a "Strategic Industry Working Group" led by Kaiko, which includes all investors, aiming to unify pricing, clearing, and reporting data infrastructure standards before tokenized products enter production environments, preparing for a "24/7 continuous trading" market. The new funding will primarily be used to develop new products and services, including direct integration of market data into smart contracts, standardizing on-chain activities into datasets, and providing confidential valuation and analysis services for institutions.
For market makers like DRW and Susquehanna, participating means securing a unified and authoritative source of crypto market data in advance, reducing friction costs in cross-platform pricing and risk management. For traditional financial infrastructure giants like S&P Global and Nasdaq, this move is about gaining an early foothold in digital asset indices and pricing power, avoiding being outpaced by emerging data providers as traditional markets evolve towards "around-the-clock continuous trading". Coinbase Ventures' involvement also gives Kaiko endorsement from the crypto-native camp, further solidifying its position as a data "intermediary" between traditional finance and the crypto industry.
Source: Public Information
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Since its establishment in 2014, Kaiko has focused on the niche of cryptocurrency market data, rapidly expanding its capabilities through continuous acquisitions in recent years—first acquiring crypto infrastructure provider Cometh to enhance on-chain data capabilities, then acquiring U.S. derivatives analytics company Amberdata. This financing marks the continuation of its fifth acquisition, indicating that the company's growth path has shifted from "building data capabilities" to a dual-track model of "acquisition integration + binding traditional financial giants".
The direction of the $110 million funding is very clear—part of it is directed towards product development (directly integrating market data into smart contracts, standardizing on-chain data), while another part is essentially purchasing the trust endorsement and distribution channels of traditional financial institutions; the investment from S&P Global, Nasdaq, Royal Bank of Canada, BNP Paribas, etc., essentially exchanges equity for early voice rights over Kaiko's data infrastructure, rather than purely financial investment. This is why the parties involved emphasize that "these are partners, not just shareholders".
Kaiko's financing is quite similar to the path taken by traditional financial data providers like Bloomberg and Refinitiv, which established industry standard positions by binding exchanges and market makers—initially establishing the status of "official data sources" through collaboration with authoritative index providers (like S&P), and then leveraging the participation of market makers and banks to enhance data quality and coverage, forming a positive cycle of data network effects. The current cryptocurrency market data industry is at a critical window where "traditional financial institutions are accelerating their entry into tokenized infrastructure, and industry standards have yet to be unified". Kaiko is attempting to position itself as the data foundational layer connecting the two worlds.
This is essentially a reconstruction of the industry chain—as traditional financial assets gradually move towards tokenization and around-the-clock continuous trading, the two sets of data infrastructures originally serving the traditional securities market and the crypto market are merging. Whoever can establish a unified data standard spanning centralized exchanges, on-chain markets, and traditional index systems first will occupy a key node position in the next generation of financial infrastructure, similar to the "Bloomberg Terminal". Mechanically, the choice of S&P, Nasdaq, and other institutions to invest directly rather than build teams indicates their judgment that in this niche field, acquiring trust and first-mover advantage is more time-efficient than independent development.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
- Whoever defines the data standard first will control the pricing power of the next generation market.
- Traditional giants cannot buy first-mover advantage; they can only buy companies that have it.
- A market that trades around the clock needs a trustworthy data source available at all times.