Circle, Ripple and Standard Chartered Back OKX at Flat $25B Valuation

What happened

OKX has raised new funding at a $25 billion valuation in a round that brought together Circle Internet Group, Ripple, Standard Chartered's investment arm SC Ventures and Qube Research & Technologies. QRT is new to the cap table. The exchange declined to say how much it raised.

The round extends one closed in March, when Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, put around $200 million into OKX at the same $25 billion mark. That deal was framed around tokenized securities. Seven months on, the price has not moved.

Haider Rafique, the exchange's global managing partner, said in a statement that the money focuses on strengthening OKX's long-term market infrastructure. QRT, a Credit Suisse spinout, runs a crypto fund holding about $1 billion. Thomas Eaton, a quantitative trading director at the firm, tied the investment to confidence in the long-term growth of digital assets and 24/7 markets.

The raise lands as OKXICE LLC, the joint venture between OKX and ICE, seeks approval to sell tokenized stock in 63 U.S. public companies, Nvidia, Apple and Coca-Cola among them. The OKX-ICE venture plans to offer tokenized trading for up to 63 NYSE-listed companies at first.

Why it matters

The deal keeps OKX's valuation flat. ICE invested at the same $25 billion mark in March, and the reports say the price has not moved since, even as a new group of backers joins.

The investor list mixes a stablecoin issuer, a British bank's venture arm and a quantitative hedge fund, tying traditional finance names to an exchange expanding in the United States.

The tokenized stock plan rests on an SEC innovation exemption, introduced in September days after the Clarity Act stalled in the Senate. It lets qualifying venues trade tokenized U.S. equities for up to five years without registering as national securities exchanges. Tokens must carry the same rights as ordinary shares, including dividends and voting, and synthetics that only track a price are excluded.

Issuers get 30 days to object to a third party tokenizing their shares. On that timetable, Nvidia, Apple and Coca-Cola each hold a veto over whether their stock appears on the venue at all.

What the data shows

OKB rose double digits after the report, reaching nearly $142, according to TradingView data cited by CoinGape. The token later pared those gains and was trading at around $136, up over 6% on the day.

OKB is up over 13% in the past week and shows a year-to-date gain of 24%, making it one of the largest gainers in 2026 among the top 100 coins by market cap.

Background

OKX has been building equity exposure through other routes, having listed perpetual futures on Magnificent Seven stocks and the S&P 500. Earlier this year the exchange appointed former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to its board. He also serves as co-chair of the OKXICE joint venture.

OKX is among the first to take advantage of the SEC's innovation exemption framework. Other platforms, such as Ondo Finance, already offer several tokenized stocks and ETFs, though mainly to non-U.S. users.

What is still unclear

• The size of the new round is not known because the exchange declined to say how much it raised.
• The reports do not say whether the SEC will approve the OKXICE filing to sell tokenized stock.
• Beyond Nvidia, Apple and Coca-Cola, the reports do not name the other companies in the 63-stock list.

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