OKX Announces Strategic Investment From Circle, QRT, Ripple and SC Ventures by Standard Chartered at a $25 Billion Valuation
The investment, an extension of the round led by NYSE-parent Intercontinental Exchange, deepens OKX's relationship with key infrastructure partners to build a more connected financial system
Today, we're announcing the completion of a strategic investment from Circle, Qube Research & Technologies (QRT), Ripple and SC Ventures by Standard Chartered at a $25 billion pre-money valuation.
In March, we announced a strategic investment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. Read more in A New Chapter: Building the Next Generation of Financial Infrastructure.
This round extends that investment and deepens our relationships with four partners that each serve a critical role in the ecosystem.Financial infrastructure works when its core components connect. Stablecoin issuance, liquidity, collateral and custody all have to meet institutional standards, and they have to work together. Each investor in this round already supports one of those layers on OKX.
Circle is a leading internet financial platform company and the issuer of USDC*, the world's largest regulated stablecoin.
QRT, a global multi-strategy investment manager and a major institutional counterparty to OKX, provides liquidity and risk capacity at scale and works closely with OKX to launch and grow new products and markets.
Ripple brings payments, liquidity and stablecoin infrastructure expertise, with its RLUSD stablecoin available across OKX’s unified order book.
Standard Chartered serves as custodian for BUIDL, the tokenized Treasury fund at the center of the collateral framework launched in partnership with OKX and BlackRock.
Through strategic investment and partnership, OKX is aligning some of the most critical builders of financial infrastructure behind its vision for the next generation of onchain markets.
"Our vision is very simple: hold it, pay with it, invest it, and grow it. We want to build the financial technology platform for the next generation, one that combines crypto technology with the standards people expect from global financial institutions," said Star Xu, Founder and CEO, OKX. "That is the foundation for this round. It gives us the capital to keep growing and to tokenize real-world assets, and Circle, QRT, Ripple and Standard Chartered are investing alongside us. The exchange was our starting point, and we are evolving into a broader global financial technology platform."
Investor Quotes
"USDC's integration across OKX's platform demonstrates what it looks like when regulated dollar infrastructure meets one of the world's most active onchain trading environments,” said Jeremy Allaire, Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Circle. “Circle's investment in OKX is a deepening of that relationship — and a signal of where we see the next generation of market infrastructure going.”
"QRT’s investment reflects our confidence in OKX and the long-term growth of digital assets and 24/7 markets," said Thomas Eaton, Quantitative Trading Director, QRT.
“Stablecoins are becoming a core part of global financial infrastructure, and scaled platforms like OKX will play an important role in driving that shift. Our investment reflects our conviction in what they’re building and opens the door to deepen our work together across stablecoins, payments and institutional markets," said Jack McDonald, SVP of Stablecoins at Ripple.
"For any meaningful institutional engagement in the context of digital assets, we need trustworthy infrastructure from the outset, including and not limited to institutional grade custody. Our partnership with OKX reflects the importance of such infrastructure in enabling the onchain economy," said Alex Manson, CEO of SC Ventures by Standard Chartered.
Disclaimer
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