Trading Infrastructure Firm Alpaca Secures $135M for AI-Driven Tokenized Platform
The fintech company backed by BNP is moving deeper into tokenized markets and artificial intelligence-powered financial services as traditional finance and decentralized finance firms increasingly pursue blockchain-based operations.
Trading infrastructure firm Alpaca announced on Thursday that it has successfully secured $135 million through a funding round spearheaded by Peak XV, accompanied by up to $300 million in debt financing arrangements from Payward, the parent company of Kraken, and BMO.
The company completed a Series D funding round in January that brought in $150 million, pushing the financial technology company's valuation to $1.15 billion, the statement revealed. Previous backers of the firm include the venture capital division of BNP Paribas.
According to Alpaca, the newly acquired capital will be deployed to fast-track development of its agent-first brokerage platform and API-first prime brokerage infrastructure solutions.
As tokenization reshapes access to global markets and AI accelerates the creation of new financial applications and market participants, demand is growing for regulated infrastructure built for this paradigm shift.
Yoshi Yokokawa, co-founder and CEO of Alpaca
The worldwide market capitalization of tokenized equities has reached an all-time high of $2.3 billion, according to information shared by data aggregator Token Terminal in an X post published on Wednesday. An increasing number of cryptocurrency platforms are migrating traditional investment offerings onto blockchain infrastructure, frequently making these assets available to investors located beyond United States borders.
In the previous month, Binance revealed a revenue-sharing partnership with Alpaca, which delivers brokerage, clearing and custody infrastructure services for Binance's equity trading product offering.