Same Price, New Backers: OKX Sticks the Landing at $25B Twice in Seven Months 🪙

Crypto exchange OKX has closed fresh investment at a $25 billion valuation, drawing capital from stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group, payments company Ripple, Standard Chartered's investment arm SC Ventures, and London quantitative hedge fund Qube Research & Technologies. The exchange declined to disclose the size of the round. The raise extends a March funding round in which Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, invested roughly $200 million in OKX at the same $25 billion mark.

The capital "focuses on strengthening OKX's long-term market infrastructure," Haider Rafique, OKX's global managing partner, said in a statement. Star Xu, founder and CEO of OKX, said the proceeds will help the exchange transition into a "broader global financial technology platform" combining "crypto technology with the standards people expect from global financial institutions." QRT, a Credit Suisse spinout, already runs a crypto fund holding about $1 billion, and its investment reflects confidence in "the long-term growth of digital assets and 24/7 markets," according to Thomas Eaton, a quantitative trading director at the firm.

OKX's joint venture with Intercontinental Exchange, OKXICE LLC, said on Monday it filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking approval to offer tokenized shares in 63 U.S. public companies, including Nvidia, Apple and Coca-Cola. The offering would operate under the SEC's innovation exemption introduced in September days after the Clarity Act stalled in the Senate, allowing qualifying venues to trade tokenized U.S. equities on public blockchains without registering as national securities exchanges for up to five years. The framework covers only tokens carrying the same rights as ordinary shares, including dividends and voting, excludes synthetics that merely track a price, caps how many stocks each venue can list, and gives issuers 30 days to object to a third party tokenizing their shares.

OKX has expanded equity exposure through other channels as well, having listed perpetual futures on Magnificent Seven stocks and the S&P 500. The exchange's native token, $OKB, surged on the report.