Nasdaq puts $100m into Kraken parent Payward, sets Q2 2027 target for tokenised equities

Nasdaq is committing $100 million to Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, extending a tokenised equities partnership that was first announced in March. The two firms have now set a public timeline for the first time: Nasdaq Equity Tokens (NETs) are targeted for launch in the second quarter of 2027. As part of the arrangement, Kraken’s trading venues will also adopt Nasdaq’s market surveillance technology.

Nasdaq is the second major exchange group to take a stake in Payward, following Deutsche Börse’s $200 million secondary purchase in April. Payward has also announced a collaboration with the London Stock Exchange Group earlier in September, suggesting the company is deliberately assembling a coalition of incumbent exchange infrastructure around its platform. Nasdaq Ventures invested at a $21 billion valuation, a modest step up from Payward’s last primary-round valuation of $20 billion according to Bloomberg, which has also reported that Payward has pushed its IPO to 2027.

The investment sits inside Nasdaq’s newly created Digital Liquidity Networks division, which was formed to house the exchange’s always-on infrastructure ambitions and also leads the Payward work. That division’s creation followed Nasdaq’s agreement last month to acquire the LeveL Markets alternative trading system (ATS), indicating the exchange is building organisational structure around what had previously been a series of discrete tokenisation bets. The Q2 2027 NET launch date now gives the market a concrete milestone to track.