Kraken
Kraken is an Exchanges & Trading company founded in 2011 and based in San Francisco, United States. It has raised $1.1B in total funding, most recently a Strategic investment (pre-IPO) in 2026 at a $13.3B valuation.
Founded in 2011 by Jesse Powell, Kraken is one of the longest-operating US cryptocurrency exchanges, offering spot trading, staking, and institutional services. It has aggressively expanded its product surface, launching the Ink Layer-2 blockchain on Optimism's OP Stack in December 2024, tokenized US equities via xStocks in 2025, and CME-listed crypto futures through Kraken Derivatives US. The company confidentially filed a draft S-1 for a US IPO in November 2025; co-CEO Arjun Sethi reaffirmed the confidential filing in April 2026, though the timeline has since slipped toward 2027 amid market weakness, and the company laid off roughly 150 employees in May 2026. A November 2025 raise valued Kraken near $20 billion, but a subsequent $200 million strategic investment from Deutsche Börse (for a ~1.5% stake) implied a reduced valuation of about $13.3 billion by April 2026.
Kraken is a top-tier US exchange pushing into tokenized stocks and derivatives, and a pending IPO would make it a key public-market comparable alongside Coinbase, Bullish, and Gemini.
kraken.com ↗·Exchanges & Trading·
United States·private 
