Crypto Exchange Kraken Prepares for IPO

Kraken Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said Tuesday (April 14) that the crypto exchange confidentially filed for an initial public offering (IPO), Semafor reported Tuesday.

Sethi shared this news at a Semafor World Economy event in Washington, D.C., according to the report.

Kraken aims to help its customers make sophisticated trades that would otherwise be available only to professional investors, Sethi said.

“That’s our mission: How do we make all these products open? We want to be able to help enable what you want to do with your own capital,” Sethi said, per the report.

Kraken announced in November that it had confidentially filed for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and that it expected the IPO to occur after the regulator completed its review process, subject to market and other conditions.

Bloomberg reported at the time, citing sources familiar with the matter, that Kraken aimed to go public as soon as the first quarter of 2026.

However, on March 18, CoinDesk reported that Kraken had paused its IPO plans until market conditions improved. Since the company’s November announcement, the downturn in crypto markets that began in October had continued and made companies more cautious about going public due to weaker investor sentiment.

On Tuesday, German stock exchange operator Deutsche Börse announced that it has invested $200 million in Kraken. The company said the deal gives it a 1.5% stake in Kraken parent Payward and expands an existing partnership between the two groups to combine traditional financial markets and digital assets.

A report by Bloomberg News calculated that the transactions value Kraken at $13.3 billion.

Kraken was valued at $20 billion in November, in the second of two tranches in which it raised a total of $800 billion, the company said at the time in a press release.

The company said in the release that it would use the funding to accelerate its efforts to bring traditional financial products on-chain. Kraken added that it would expand its product suite organically and through acquisitions, deepen its regulated footprint, enter new markets and continue to expand its offerings beyond crypto.