Alpaca raises $435m in equity and debt to anchor tokenised stock custody

US API broker Alpaca has secured a combined $435 million in fresh capital: $135 million in equity led by Peak XV, with BNP Paribas Group’s venture arm Opera Tech Ventures, Elefund, and Unbound participating, alongside a separate $300 million debt facility drawn primarily from Kraken parent Payward and BMO. The raise follows a $150 million Series D completed in January, and sits alongside two recent acquisitions: WealthKernel, an API brokerage service in Europe, and Zincmoney in India.

The strategic weight of the round lies in Alpaca’s position as the principal custodian for the stocks underpinning roughly $1.5 billion in synthetic tokenised equity. Backed (xStocks), Ondo Global Markets, Robinhood, and Binance bStocks all depend on Alpaca’s infrastructure to hold the physical equities that collateralise their token programmes. That concentration makes Alpaca a systemically significant counterparty in the tokenised-stock stack even if it remains largely invisible to end investors.

The debt component introduces a notable governance wrinkle. Payward, which owns Backed, is simultaneously a creditor to the custodian its own product relies upon. That position gives Payward direct visibility into Alpaca’s operations and, depending on loan terms, a potential route toward an equity stake. The practical question the round leaves open is what Alpaca intends to deploy $300 million in debt capital toward, given that custody and API brokerage are not conventionally capital-intensive businesses at that scale.