Circle, Ripple and Standard Chartered Invest in OKX at $25B Valuation

OKX has closed a new funding round at a $25 billion valuation, drawing investment from stablecoin issuer Circle, payments and blockchain firm Ripple, and Standard Chartered's venture arm SC Ventures, the crypto exchange announced on Tuesday, October 6. A London quantitative hedge fund also joined the round, according to separate reporting, at the same valuation at which the Intercontinental Exchange invested in OKX seven months earlier.

Who Invested and Why It Matters

The composition of the investor group is notable: Circle issues $USDC, one of the largest stablecoins by market capitalization; Ripple operates the XRP Ledger and has its own stablecoin and payments infrastructure; and SC Ventures is the innovation and fintech investment arm of British bank Standard Chartered. Together they represent a cross-section of regulated financial institutions and crypto-native infrastructure builders rather than the venture capital firms that have historically backed crypto exchanges.

OKX framed the round in strategic terms. "Through strategic investment and partnership, OKX is aligning some of the most critical builders of financial infrastructure behind its vision for the next generation of onchain markets," the company said in a statement. CEO and founder Star Xu added: "The exchange was our starting point, and we are evolving into a broader global financial technology platform."

The Tokenization Ambition Behind the Round

Tokenization — the process of representing ownership of real-world assets such as stocks, bonds or funds as digital tokens on a blockchain — is the stated purpose of the capital raise. OKX said Xu indicated the funds would be directed toward tokenizing real-world assets, a market that has attracted growing interest from both crypto-native firms and traditional financial institutions.

The most concrete expression of that ambition is OKXICE, a joint venture between OKX and the Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange. OKXICE filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Sunday to launch a tokenized securities platform designed to enable around-the-clock trading of U.S. stocks. Traditional stock markets operate on fixed weekday hours; a blockchain-based platform could, in principle, allow trading at any time.

Regulatory Backdrop

The filing lands in a more permissive regulatory environment than existed a year ago. The SEC approved tokenized stock trading in September 2026, a shift that reflects the broader policy direction under the current U.S. administration. That approval clears a path for platforms like OKXICE to operate within a defined regulatory framework rather than in a legal grey area — a meaningful change for institutional participants who require regulatory clarity before committing capital or custody.

The interest from firms like Standard Chartered and Circle suggests that regulated entities are now willing to take direct equity stakes in crypto exchanges, not merely offer banking or custody services to them. This represents a deeper form of institutional integration than cryptocurrency regulation watchers have typically seen from major banks.

Context: A Flat Valuation With Strategic Logic

The $25 billion figure is unchanged from ICE's investment earlier in 2026, meaning OKX has not marked up its valuation despite the additional capital and high-profile backers. A flat round can indicate that the company is prioritizing the strategic value of its investors — their distribution networks, regulatory relationships and infrastructure — over a higher headline number. For Circle, whose $USDC stablecoin could see expanded use on OKX's platform, and for Ripple, which has its own tokenization and payments ambitions, the investment also carries potential commercial upside beyond a financial return.

OKX operates one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges globally by trading volume. The OKXICE SEC filing will be a key document to watch: the scope of assets it covers, the custody arrangements it proposes and the timeline it sets out will determine how quickly the joint venture can move from filing to live trading.