One of the oldest crypto exchanges — ~$2.2B revenue and IPO-bound
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States | Founded: 2011 | Employees: Not disclosed in reviewed sources | Stage: Private (parent Payward, Inc.); $20B valuation Nov 2025, $13.3B secondary April 2026; confidential S-1 filed and active | Website: https://www.kraken.com
Kraken was founded in July 2011 in San Francisco by Jesse Powell, Thanh Luu and Michael Gronager, and launched its exchange publicly in September 2013, initially trading Bitcoin, Litecoin, euros and dollars. It earned early credibility as a security-focused venue: it has never suffered a major theft of customer funds, keeps roughly 95% of deposits in air-gapped, geographically distributed cold storage, and built a reputation for serving professional traders with deep order books rather than chasing retail volume with aggressive listing practices. Sacra estimates it generated about $2.2B of revenue in 2025, up 33% from $1.7B in 2024, with total platform transaction volume of $2.0T, $48.2B of assets on platform and 5.7M funded accounts; Q1 2026 revenue was $507M. Estimates put its user base at over 9 million across 190+ countries.
Corporate history explains the structure. Powell ran Kraken until September 2022, when COO Dave Ripley succeeded him and Powell became chairman; in October 2024 Arjun Sethi, a long-time investor, became co-CEO alongside Ripley under parent company Payward, Inc. That pairing pushed the firm into acquisitions and institutional markets: NinjaTrader, a U.S. futures brokerage, for $1.5B in March 2025; Backed Finance, bringing tokenized equities, in December 2025; Bitnomial, which holds the three CFTC licences needed for a full-stack U.S. derivatives business, for up to $550M in April 2026 (closed 1 May 2026); and Saldo Bank in October 2026 to secure an EU banking licence.
The regulatory position is the strategic core. The SEC dismissed its securities lawsuit against Kraken in March 2025. Kraken secured a MiCA licence through its Irish entity and can passport trading, custody and payment services across the EEA, including MiFID II-regulated perpetual-style derivatives. In the U.S. it routed customers to CME-listed crypto futures through Kraken Derivatives US from July 2025 and then bought Bitnomial to offer spot margin, perpetuals and options under CFTC regulation. Kraken Financial, its bank, holds a Federal Reserve master account — reported in 2026 — making it one of the first crypto-native firms with direct access to Fed payment rails.
The funding path has been as unusual as the business. Kraken raised only about $27M before 2025, choosing to grow on revenue rather than venture capital, before taking $500M at a $15B valuation in September 2025 and $800M at $20B in November 2025 (a $600M primary led by Jane Street, DRW Venture Capital, HSG, Oppenheimer and Tribe Capital, plus $200M from Citadel Securities), bringing total primary funding to roughly $1.7B. It then filed confidentially for an IPO on 19 November 2025. In April 2026 Deutsche Börse bought a $200M secondary stake at an implied $13.3B valuation alongside a partnership on trading, custody and tokenized assets, and in March 2026 management paused the listing while waiting for better market conditions. Reports in October 2026 said Kraken was seeking $500M at $15B as it prepared to return to the public-market window.
Kraken is the crypto exchange that outlasted the cycle and is now trying to become a public company on the strength of a diversified, regulated business rather than a token rally. Its 2025 numbers are impressive for a firm founded in 2011: Sacra estimates ~$2.2B of revenue (+33% YoY), $2.0T of platform volume (+34%), $530M of adjusted EBITDA, 5.7M funded accounts and $48.2B of assets on platform, with Q1 2026 revenue of $507M. Two $1B-scale acquisitions in two years — NinjaTrader for $1.5B and Bitnomial for up to $550M — turned a spot exchange into a full-stack derivatives and brokerage business, while a Federal Reserve master account for Kraken Financial and a MiCA licence in Ireland gave it banking and EU distribution most crypto rivals still lack.
The valuation story is more turbulent than the operating story. Kraken's valuation ran from about $11B in 2022 to $15B (September 2025), then $20B in November 2025, when it raised $800M — including a $200M strategic investment from Citadel Securities — and filed a confidential S-1. By April 2026 a $200M secondary purchase by Deutsche Börse implied $13.3B, roughly a third below the peak, and reports in October 2026 said the company was again seeking $500M at $15B ahead of a listing. Management paused the IPO in March 2026 on market conditions and has kept the filing alive, targeting a window it believes will price better.
The bull case is that crypto's regulated era rewards the firms that spent years collecting licences, and Kraken has the rare combination of scale, profitability and U.S. regulatory standing — helped by the SEC dropping its securities suit in March 2025 and its CFTC-licensed derivatives stack. The bear case is cyclical and structural: exchange revenue tracks trading volume, Coinbase is far larger and publicly traded, Binance and OKX dominate offshore liquidity, and a $13.3B mark in April against a $20B peak shows how quickly sentiment moves. Kraken's IPO will be the clearest test yet of whether investors value regulated crypto infrastructure like a financial exchange or price it like a volatile token.
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