OKX Raises New Capital at $25B as Four Partners Buy In
In this article
OKX said Tuesday it closed a strategic investment from Circle, Ripple, Qube Research & Technologies and Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures at a $25 billion pre-money valuation, according to Cryptopotato. The exchange declined to disclose how much any of the four firms put in or what stakes they took.
Four partners who already touch the plumbing
None of the four investors arrived cold. Circle issues USDC, which sits across OKX’s trading products; in September the two companies expanded USDC trading across spot, margin and futures, with OKX introducing a USDC Margin Growth Program funded by Circle, crypto.news reported. A month earlier, Circle deployed native USDC on X Layer, OKX’s Ethereum-compatible layer 2, alongside its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol.
Ripple’s tie runs through RLUSD, which trades on OKX’s unified order book. Jack McDonald, Ripple’s senior vice president of stablecoins, said the investment “reflects our conviction in what they’re building and opens the door to deepen our work together across stablecoins, payments and institutional markets.”
QRT, a multi-strategy investment manager, is an institutional counterparty that supplies the exchange with liquidity and risk capacity. Thomas Eaton, a quantitative trading director at the firm, tied the decision to confidence in the long-term growth of digital assets and round-the-clock markets. Decrypt noted QRT is a Credit Suisse spinout that already runs a crypto fund holding about $1 billion.
Standard Chartered’s involvement runs through BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund. Under the April 28 framework, VIP and institutional clients can post BUIDL as trading collateral while the bank keeps the fund shares in custody off the exchange and trades run on OKX Middle East. OKX handles margining and liquidation; clients retain ownership of the BUIDL and its yield. Alex Manson, CEO of SC Ventures, said institutional participation in digital assets requires infrastructure that includes institutional-grade custody.
Why it matters
The round keeps OKX’s paper valuation flat seven months after ICE, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, bought in at the same $25 billion figure with board representation. Holders of that earlier stake see no markup, and the new money comes from counterparties whose commercial relationships with OKX predate the equity. That structure ties the exchange more tightly to the banks, stablecoin issuers and trading firms it already depends on — a pattern that matters to any institution weighing whether to route collateral, settlement or liquidity through OKX.
What to watch
The OKXICE filing with the SEC is the nearest concrete test: the 63 tokenized NYSE stocks face issuer opt-outs over a 30-day window, and trading cannot start before that closes. U.S. regulators’ treatment of the innovation-exemption route — introduced in September days after the Clarity Act stalled in the Senate, per Decrypt — will shape whether the model extends beyond equities.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much did Circle, Ripple, QRT and SC Ventures invest in OKX?
OKX did not disclose the amount invested by any of the four firms or their individual stakes. The company only confirmed the round was done at a $25 billion pre-money valuation.
Why did OKX’s valuation stay at $25 billion?
The new investment extends the round ICE led in March at the same $25 billion mark, so the price did not move even though new capital came in seven months later.
What does Standard Chartered get out of the OKX relationship?
Standard Chartered already acts as custodian for BlackRock’s BUIDL fund used as OKX trading collateral, holding the shares off-exchange while institutional clients trade on OKX Middle East.
What is OKX doing with the new capital?
CEO Star Xu said the money supports the exchange’s continued growth and its plans to tokenize real-world assets as it builds beyond its core exchange business.
When did RLUSD go live on OKX?
Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin went live on more than 280 OKX trading pairs in April, including pairs against XRP.
Did the four investors have prior ties to OKX?
Yes. Each already supported a layer of the business, from Circle’s USDC integration to Ripple’s RLUSD order book, QRT’s institutional liquidity and Standard Chartered’s custody role.
Originally published on BitcoinWorld.
Sources: CryptoPotato, crypto.news, Decrypt
