S&P Global Backs Kaiko as Crypto Data Firm Reaches $110M Series B

A $110 Million Round Built Over Four Years

Crypto data provider Kaiko disclosed on September 14 that its Series B funding has reached a cumulative total of $110 million, with S&P Global named as the lead investor in the latest extension. The original Series B closed in June 2022 at $53 million, led by Eight Roads, meaning the newly announced figure reflects an additional $57 million raised in the intervening period. Kaiko did not disclose its current valuation, the specific size of S&P Global’s check, or the individual amounts contributed by other participants in the extension.

That opacity around the deal structure limits what can be determined about ownership stakes or the implied price of the company at this stage.

What is clear is the strategic weight that S&P Global’s involvement carries. The ratings and financial data giant joining as lead investor in a crypto-native data company signals a deepening institutional appetite for digital-asset market infrastructure – not just exposure to crypto prices, but the underlying data plumbing that institutional trading depends on. Kaiko’s decision to frame the financing as a strategic round rather than a standard growth investment reflects the same logic: the company is positioning itself at the intersection of traditional financial data standards and emerging tokenized-market architecture.

Who Else Is In the Room

The investor roster assembled alongside S&P Global spans an unusually broad cross-section of financial markets. BNP Paribas, Royal Bank of Canada, Nasdaq Ventures, Broadridge, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, DRW Venture Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Bpifrance, Canton Foundation, and Stellar all participated in the extension. Existing shareholders Anthemis, Point Nine, and Revaia also contributed to the round. The combination of major banks, exchange operators, trading firms, and crypto-native infrastructure players in a single financing is not typical, even for companies that bridge traditional and digital finance.

Beyond capital, the participating investors joined a Strategic Industry Working Group that Kaiko will chair. The group’s stated focus is data infrastructure for tokenized markets. Kaiko did not outline specific projects, timelines, or deliverables tied to the working group in its announcement, leaving the practical scope of the initiative undefined for now. Still, convening BNP Paribas, RBC, Nasdaq, and Coinbase Ventures around the same table – even nominally – reflects an industry-level acknowledgment that tokenized market data standards remain an unsolved problem worth organized attention.

The financing structure itself functions as a form of market signal. When institutions with competing interests and different regulatory environments co-invest in a data infrastructure company and commit to a shared working group, they are, at minimum, betting that interoperability and data standards in tokenized markets will require a neutral, specialized provider. Kaiko is positioning itself as that provider. Whether the working group produces anything concrete or remains a coordination forum is a separate question entirely.

Index Launch Gives the Investment Immediate Commercial Context

S&P Global’s investment did not arrive in isolation. On September 1 – less than two weeks before the financing announcement – S&P Dow Jones Indices and Kaiko jointly announced the S&P Kaiko Digital Asset Indices suite, a co-branded product set covering more than 4,000 rates and indices. That index launch is the clearest commercial expression of what the S&P Global relationship looks like in practice: Kaiko’s exchange-level and protocol-level data feeding into S&P Dow Jones Indices’ established index infrastructure, aimed at institutional clients who need benchmarks that meet traditional financial standards. The decision to extend financing so shortly after the index announcement suggests the commercial relationship preceded the investment, rather than the other way around.

Kaiko’s data infrastructure currently covers more than 150 exchanges and protocols, built for continuous 24/7 operations across both digital-asset and tokenized markets. The company has said the new capital will support both its core data business and its expansion into onchain capital-markets infrastructure – the latter being the segment where tokenized bonds, funds, and other instruments require pricing, settlement, and reference data that doesn’t yet have established standards. That gap is where Kaiko and its new investor group appear to be placing their bets.

Kaiko and S&P Global have not disclosed whether the investment changes the governance structure, commercial terms, or product scope of the S&P Kaiko index suite. The announced relationship currently encompasses both the index product and the expanded financing, without further detail on how those two elements interact contractually or strategically. Circle’s Arc mainnet launch with BlackRock, Visa, and DTCC as validators illustrates how quickly traditional financial institutions are moving to establish positions in tokenized infrastructure – a context that makes Kaiko’s expanded investor base look less like opportunistic timing and more like a structured response to a defined market transition.

Kaiko did not provide a separate closing date for individual commitments within the extension, and the announcement did not break down capital contributions by investor. The $110 million cumulative figure is the only number confirmed – everything else about the deal’s internal mechanics, including what S&P Global actually paid for its stake, remains undisclosed. For a company now chaired over a working group that includes some of the largest names in global finance, that gap between public narrative and disclosed financial detail is worth watching.