OKX has taken a strategic investment from Circle, Ripple, hedge fund Qube Research & Technologies (QRT) and SC Ventures, Standard Chartered's venture arm, at a $25 billion pre-money valuation, the exchange announced on Tuesday. OKX did not disclose how much it raised.
OKX describes the raise as an extension of the round led in March by Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. That investment, reported at roughly $200 million, was priced at the same $25 billion. The valuation has therefore held flat for seven months, a period in which OKX's joint venture with ICE has moved toward launching tokenised US equities.
The new investors line up closely with infrastructure OKX already uses. Circle issues USDC, and Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin trades across OKX's unified order book. QRT is a major institutional counterparty on the exchange. Standard Chartered, which OKX named as its institutional custody partner in 2024, is custodian for BlackRock's BUIDL tokenised Treasury fund, which sits at the centre of the collateral framework OKX launched with BlackRock.
"Our vision is very simple: hold it, pay with it, invest it, and grow it," said Star Xu, OKX's founder and CEO. "It gives us the capital to keep growing and to tokenize real-world assets," he added. "The exchange was our starting point, and we are evolving into a broader global financial technology platform."
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire called the investment "a deepening of that relationship" and "a signal of where we see the next generation of market infrastructure going." Alex Manson, CEO of SC Ventures, said institutional engagement with digital assets requires "trustworthy infrastructure from the outset, including and not limited to institutional grade custody."
Because OKX's new shareholders are also its suppliers, the round reads as much as a commercial alignment as a capital raise. Circle and Ripple both benefit when their tokens are the settlement asset on a venue of OKX's size, and an equity stake ties them more closely to where that volume is routed.
OKX said the capital will go toward tokenising real-world assets. OKXICE, its 50-50 joint venture with ICE, has moved to offer tokenised versions of 63 US stocks under the SEC's innovation exemption, which allows trading without registration as a national securities exchange for up to five years. Those tokens are set to trade against stablecoins including USDC, which places one of this round's investors directly in the settlement path of the product it is helping to fund.
