OKX draws investment from StanChart, Circle, Ripple as it pushes beyond crypto exchange roots

OKX has secured fresh backing from Circle, Ripple, quantitative manager Qube Research & Technologies (QRT) and SC Ventures, the venture unit of Standard Chartered, in a financing round that values the company at $25 billion on a pre-money basis. The exchange did not disclose the size of the investment. The round extends an earlier March investment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owner of the New York Stock Exchange.

Founder and CEO Star Xu described trading as the firm's starting point and said OKX is evolving into a broader global financial technology platform intended to let customers hold, spend, invest and grow their money within a single ecosystem. The new investors reflect that cross-over: Circle issues the USDC stablecoin, Ripple provides payments infrastructure and issues RLUSD, QRT acts as an institutional counterparty and liquidity provider to OKX, and Standard Chartered has existing custody relationships tied to tokenized products.

The financing comes as OKX and ICE move to operationalize tokenized equity trading through a joint venture, OKXICE. The planned venue would offer round-the-clock trading in tokenized shares of 63 U.S. companies on OKX’s X Layer blockchain, with trading and settlement taking place using stablecoins including USDC, USDT and USDG. The proposal relies on the SEC's new five-year tokenization framework and retains dividend and voting rights for the tokenized shares.

Market participants and banks have flagged questions about institutional uptake. Investment bank Macquarie noted early demand may skew toward retail investors, citing institutions' existing efficient access to U.S.-listed stocks and the regulatory and integration costs of connecting to a new platform. TD Securities raised similar concerns. The development will serve as an early test of whether stablecoins can be adopted for settlement in regulated financial markets beyond crypto trading.