S&P Global has led a strategic investment in crypto data provider Kaiko, extending the company’s Series B financing to $110 million and signaling that institutional competition is moving beyond token ownership toward control of the information infrastructure supporting digital markets.
Kaiko announced the investment on September 14, saying the round also included 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. The company did not disclose its valuation.
The investor group brings together firms from financial indexes, banking, market making, exchange infrastructure and digital assets. Their participation points to a common expectation: tokenized markets will require institutional grade data before they can support meaningful volumes of capital.
Building the information layer
Kaiko said the new capital will support its core market data business and expand infrastructure for onchain capital markets. The company reports coverage of more than 150 exchanges and protocols, including centralized and decentralized venues.
That coverage matters because tokenized finance is unlikely to operate through a single marketplace. Liquidity may be distributed across exchanges, automated market makers, private platforms and blockchain based settlement networks. Each venue can have different trading hours, custody arrangements, pricing conventions and legal structures.
A token representing a bond, fund share or other offchain asset may also carry claims that differ from the instrument itself. Investors need to know not only where the token trades, but what rights it conveys, how it settles, which entity maintains the underlying asset and whether its price remains aligned with that asset.
For banks and asset managers, this information can feed pricing models, risk systems, compliance checks, portfolio reporting and benchmark construction. It can also help determine whether a market has enough depth to support institutional execution rather than simply displaying a quoted price.
S&P Global’s participation gives the financing particular significance. The company’s traditional businesses are built around ratings, benchmarks, indexes and financial information. Its involvement suggests that crypto data may increasingly be treated as a component of mainstream market infrastructure rather than as a specialized product for digital asset traders.
From data feeds to market standards
The investment follows a broader integration strategy at Kaiko. The company has acquired DeFi infrastructure provider Cometh and US data firm Amberdata. Earlier in September, it launched S&P Kaiko Digital Asset Indices with S&P Dow Jones Indices.
Those steps bring together several layers of the institutional data stack: exchange prices, liquidity analysis, decentralized finance activity, onchain information and index products. The strategic industry working group formed by the investors, and chaired by Kaiko, will focus on data and infrastructure for tokenized markets.
The capital flow also reveals where financial institutions see a potential bottleneck. Tokenization projects have multiplied, but adoption depends on more than issuing assets on a blockchain. Institutions need reliable reference prices, transparent liquidity measures and consistent methods for valuing assets that trade across fragmented venues.
Influence and concentration risks
The opportunity is substantial. Better data could make it easier for asset managers to price tokenized products, for banks to monitor exposure and for issuers to demonstrate that digital representations track their underlying assets.
Yet the same process could concentrate influence among a small number of data and index providers. Firms that define reference rates, liquidity standards or eligibility criteria may help determine which tokenized markets appear credible and investable.
It also remains unclear how much current demand comes from active tokenized markets and how much reflects positioning for future growth. Kaiko’s acquisitions and the new financing indicate that investors are willing to fund the infrastructure ahead of broad adoption. The next test will be whether transaction volumes, institutional mandates and recurring data revenue catch up with that expectation.
This article was written with the assistance of an AI system and published automatically.