OKX adds Circle, Ripple and SC Ventures at $25B valuation

OKX has completed an investment extension from Circle, Qube Research & Technologies, Ripple and Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures at a $25 billion pre-money valuation. The cryptocurrency exchange did not disclose the amount invested. The deal extends a March investment led by New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental Exchange at the same valuation.

OKX’s core business is an exchange where customers trade digital assets. Founder Star Xu says the company now wants customers to hold, spend and invest money through the same platform. That plan would stretch the business into payments and conventional assets moved onto blockchain infrastructure, rather than leave it dependent on cryptocurrency trading alone.

The new shareholders already touch different parts of OKX’s infrastructure. Circle issues the USDC stablecoin, while Ripple provides payments infrastructure and has made its RLUSD stablecoin available through OKX’s unified order book. QRT is an institutional counterparty that supplies liquidity and trading capacity. Standard Chartered provides custody for BlackRock’s tokenized Treasury fund under a collateral arrangement involving OKX.

The investment is separate from, but arrives alongside, OKX’s push into tokenized shares. CoinDesk reports that an OKX-ICE joint venture has filed to offer around-the-clock trading in tokenized shares of 63 United States companies, using OKX’s blockchain and stablecoins for trading and settlement. Macquarie expects early adoption to lean toward retail investors, citing regulatory uncertainty, integration costs and the challenge of maintaining reliable liquidity for institutions.

Because the extension uses the same pre-money valuation as the March transaction, it does not establish a higher price for OKX. The company says the capital will support growth and the tokenization of real-world assets. Without a disclosed investment amount, however, the scale of the additional capital remains unknown.