Cryptocurrency brokerage infrastructure company Alpaca raised $135 million to expand the rails used by exchanges and tokenization platforms to offer US stocks on-chain.
Peak XV led Alpaca’s equity round, with participation from Elefund, BNP Paribas’ Opera Tech Ventures and Unbound, according to a Thursday announcement. The raise follows a $150 million Series D in January that valued the company at $1.15 billion.
Debt financing, primarily from Kraken parent Payward and BMO, brought the total package to $435 million.
Alpaca clears or custody approximately 94% of tokenized US stocks, including products related to market leaders Binance, Ondo and Dinari. The company said it has more than $1.5 billion in underlying shares backing tokenized shares held through its infrastructure.
The funding underscores a central limitation that tokenized stocks face: Putting a stock on-chain does not eliminate the need for a regulated company to own the underlying stock, process corporate actions, and connect blockchain transactions to traditional markets.
Its instant tokenization network allows market participants to mint and redeem tokenized shares for underlying shares 24 hours a day. The products often combine exposure to blockchain-based stocks with funding or trading stablecoins, connecting stocks to 24/7 cryptocurrency settlement rails.
