The API-first brokerage infrastructure company Alpaca has raised $150 million in a Series D round. With this round, the company’s valuation reaches $1.15 billion, making it a unicorn and a foundational layer of modern finance. Alongside the equity raise, Alpaca secured a $40 million line of credit, giving it additional flexibility as global demand for embedded investing accelerates.
Drive Capital led the investment, with its co-founder and partner Chris Olsen joining Alpaca’s board. The round also drew participation from Citadel Securities, Kraken, BNP Paribas’ Opera Tech Ventures, MUFG Innovation Partners, DRW Venture Capital, and Endeavor Catalyst, among others.
Returning investors such as Portage, Horizons Ventures, and Derayah Financial doubled down. It also saw angle backing from Revolut CTO Vlad Yatsenko.
With fresh capital, the company is now focused on deepening local market presence, strengthening cybersecurity, and bridging fiat and on-chain rails. In an industry chasing the next interface, Alpaca is quietly owning the infrastructure.
How was the idea born?
Alpaca was founded in 2015 by Japanese entrepreneurs Yoshi Yokokawa and Hitoshi Harada, and is now headquartered in the US. It started as a database and machine learning company focused on processing large volumes of market data using deep neural networks for financial institutions and trading firms. While working with time-series data, the team identified a lack of databases designed specifically for financial markets.
This led to the creation of MarketStore, a purpose-built, open-source database optimised for financial time-series data. That engineering-first approach shaped Alpaca’s philosophy. Rather than relying on legacy systems or external vendors, the company built its own technology, laying the foundation for its evolution into a modern brokerage infrastructure.
“Our mission is to open financial services to everyone on the planet. We’re proud to contribute to Saudi Vision 2030 by building the global standard for brokerage infrastructure, including infrastructure that enables Shariah-compliant investing, empowering partners to build financial services that align with Islamic law,” said Yokokawa.
Building the pipes of global investing
Alpaca focuses on powering them. Its self-clearing infrastructure and APIs allow financial institutions and fintechs to offer access to stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, and fixed income without building everything in-house. Today, more than 300 partners across over 40 countries rely on Alpaca to support millions of brokerage accounts.
This quiet dominance is especially visible in tokenisation. Late last year, Alpaca revealed that it powered 94% of all tokenised U.S. equities and ETFs, placing it at the centre of the convergence between traditional markets and on-chain finance. That positioning has translated into momentum on the balance sheet, with revenue more than doubling year over year.
From infrastructure to institutional-grade scale
2025 marked a breakout phase for the company as it expanded into multi-leg options, fixed income, fully paid securities lending, and 24/5 U.S. stock trading. It launched high-yield cash sweep programs and unveiled its Instant Tokenisation Network at TOKEN2049 Singapore with partners spanning crypto and traditional finance.
Regulatory progress kept pace. Memberships with OCC and FICC, Nasdaq Exchange status, and embeddable Shariah-compliant investing tools underscored Alpaca’s push toward institutional-grade reliability.
“Alpaca’s infrastructure has been a core pillar to Sarwa’s expansion since 2021. Our partnership allowed us to connect global markets and MENA investors. By integrating with their APIs, we’ve become a comprehensive investment powerhouse. Stocks, ETFs, crypto, bonds, and so much more. We became Alpaca’s first partner to offer options trading globally,” added Mark Chahwan, Co-Founder and Group CEO at Sarwa
“Some of the most transformative companies in technology are the ones behind the scenes, powering entire industries. Just as Stripe and Plaid rewired payments and financial data pipes, Alpaca is redefining how global investing infrastructure works. They’re building the foundational layer that modern financial institutions will depend on for the next decade,” said Olsen, Co-Founder and Partner of Drive Capital.
