The capital will go toward expanding Kaiko's existing product suite across more than 150 exchanges and protocols. Founded in Paris in 2014 by Ambre Soubiran and Pascal Gauthier, who now serves as CEO of hardware wallet company Ledger, the firm provides market data, analytics, reference rates, and index products to more than 250 financial institutions and regulators worldwide. Its coverage spans over 10,000 currency pairs on 70-plus exchanges, delivered via APIs, WebSockets, and cloud feeds. The round nearly doubles its original Series B of $53 million, which Eight Roads led in June 2022 during a period of broader market contraction. Returning investors Anthemis, Point Nine, and Revaia also participated in the extension.

The deal formalizes a relationship between S&P Global and Kaiko that has been building for roughly a year. In October 2025, S&P Global launched a Crypto Ecosystem Index blending 15 cryptocurrencies with 35 crypto-linked equities. In March 2026, S&P Dow Jones Indices and Kaiko jointly tokenized the iBoxx U.S. Treasuries Index on-chain. Then, 13 days before this funding announcement, the two firms co-launched the S&P Kaiko Digital Asset Indices, a suite of more than 4,000 rates and indices targeting ETFs, structured products, and portfolio benchmarking.

S&P Global Ventures leading this extension is the capital commitment that follows from all of that groundwork.

Cathy Clay, CEO of S&P Dow Jones Indices, described the investment as an expression of long-term conviction. "As digital assets accelerate, S&P Global is investing for the future," she said, adding that the round underscores that commitment.

Ambre Soubiran, Kaiko's CEO, described the backing as "a powerful endorsement of Kaiko's mission and the role trusted data and data infrastructure will play in tokenized markets."

Beyond the headline number, the structure of the round carries its own signal. All new investors have joined a Strategic Industry Working Group chaired by Kaiko, giving Nasdaq, BNP Paribas, RBC, and others a direct role in shaping data and infrastructure standards for tokenized products. This is uncommon governance for a private fundraise and may reflect that participants view membership as a seat at a standard-setting table as much as a financial investment.

Bloomberg framed the deal around the prospect of 24/7 markets, the growing expectation that crypto's always-on structure will influence or merge with traditional financial market hours, and the data infrastructure required to support that shift.

Kaiko has also been consolidating aggressively in 2026. It acquired on-chain data provider Cometh around May, adding oracle and tokenization capabilities to its stack. In June, it acquired Amberdata, which brought derivatives analytics, the GVOL options platform, and AI-powered market intelligence tools. Together, those deals gave Kaiko a full-stack offering covering spot markets, derivatives, on-chain activity, indices, oracles, and tokenization infrastructure in a single platform.

Regional Context

South Asia is now the fastest-growing crypto adoption region globally, with an 80 percent year-over-year increase in transaction volume during the first seven months of 2025 and roughly $300 billion in total volume recorded. India ranks first in the 2025 Chainalysis Global Crypto Adoption Index; Pakistan ranks third.

Pakistan's Virtual Assets Act, signed into law in March 2026, created PVARA as a permanent federal regulatory authority, and Binance and HTX have both received preliminary no-objection certificates to operate under it.

Sub-Saharan Africa recorded more than $205 billion in on-chain value between July 2024 and June 2025, an approximately 52 percent year-over-year jump. Across Africa as a whole, the continent posted the highest adoption growth rate of any region globally at 19.4 percent year-on-year.

Kaiko's client list already includes regulators, and as institutions like PVARA and India's Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) continue developing crypto oversight frameworks, credible, multi-venue market data becomes a regulatory necessity rather than a product feature. The backing of S&P Global, Nasdaq, and RBC gives Kaiko a credibility profile with traditional regulators that is structurally difficult for purely crypto-native data providers to replicate in these markets.

One investor in this round deserves specific attention: Stellar, the blockchain network designed for cross-border payments and financial inclusion, with active presence in Nigeria, Tanzania, and South Asian remittance markets.

Stellar's participation suggests Kaiko's infrastructure roadmap may extend to support pricing and data services for networks with a strong presence in the Global South. That would be meaningful for developers building on-chain products in those regions, particularly given that the Cometh acquisition added oracle infrastructure that underpins reliable pricing for DeFi protocols. A direct caution applies, though: Kaiko's services are priced for institutional clients. Retail users across South Asia and Africa will not see immediate benefits, and any trickle-down effect through improved infrastructure will take time to materialize.

The more significant forward question is whether Kaiko's co-branded index suite with S&P and its post-Amberdata derivatives coverage create a durable structural advantage, or whether other data providers narrow the gap as institutional crypto markets mature. With this syndicate now co-designing the standards, that competitive dynamic will play out partly inside the working group itself.