Kraken

Fourteen years is a long time to stay sharp in an industry that confuses volume with virtue. Kraken did not arrive loud. It arrived correct. Born in 2011 in the shadow of Mt. Gox, Jesse Powell, Thanh Luu, and Michael Gronager did not see a gold rush. They saw an integrity gap. So they built Payward Inc. around security, compliance, and a refusal to chase growth before trust. That choice looked conservative for a decade. In hindsight, it looks like strategy.

In 2025, Kraken delivered $2.2B in revenue, up 33% year over year, with $531M in adjusted EBITDA. Transaction volume crossed $2T. Funded accounts reached 5.7M. Assets on platform closed at $48.2B. All of it built on just $27M in primary capital raised before 2025. In a startup ecosystem conditioned to reward burn rates over balance sheets, that capital efficiency is not a footnote. It is the headline.

This is not a SaaS narrative. This is financial infrastructure with teeth. Kraken operates a vertically integrated stack where exchange matching, custody, clearing, and settlement live under one roof. Spot trading spans more than 530 assets. Futures and derivatives run through NinjaTrader and Crypto Facilities. More than 11,000 U.S. equities and ETFs trade commission free. Tokenized equities serve non U.S. clients. Staking, payments, and Embed allow institutions like bunq to offer crypto without building an exchange from scratch. Less gloss. More load-bearing steel.

Leadership matches the moment. Dave Ripley, co CEO, runs internal operations with an engineer’s instinct for stress testing systems before they fail. Arjun Sethi, co CEO since October 2024, leads external strategy and the IPO path with the calm of a builder who understands market structure as well as narrative. Jesse Powell now serves as board chair, focused on governance and long-horizon conviction. This is not founders clinging to control. This is founders designing continuity.

Kraken raised $800M in 2025, anchored by a $200M strategic investment from Citadel Securities at a $20B valuation. Jane Street, DRW, HSG, Oppenheimer, and Tribe Capital were already on the cap table. A confidential U.S. IPO filing followed in November 2025. The signal was clear. Crypto infrastructure is moving from experiment to institution.

The $1.5B NinjaTrader acquisition said the quiet part out loud. 2M additional traders. A CFTC-registered futures merchant. Revenue shifting from 92% trading dependent to a balanced 47%–53% mix. Not a pivot. The architecture doing exactly what it was built to do.

Kraken is hiring across engineering, product, compliance, and operations, globally and remote-first. In a startup ecosystem that often mistakes speed for progress, Kraken stands as proof that discipline compounds, silently, until it does not need permission to lead.