Circle, Ripple and Standard Chartered Bank invest in OKX at a $25 billion valuation

OKX completes strategic financing with a valuation of US$25 billion.

OKX announced that it has completed strategic investments involving Circle, Qube Research & Technologies (QRT), Ripple and SC Ventures, a subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank. This round of financing brought OKX's pre-investment valuation to US$25 billion. The deal brings four existing infrastructure partners into a previous financing round led in March by Intercontinental Exchange Group (ICE), parent company of the New York Stock Exchange.

Deepen existing partnerships and expand the financial landscape

According to OKX's announcement on October 6, these four new investors-Circle, QRT, Ripple and SC Ventures-have cooperated with OKX in key infrastructure areas such as stablecoin issuance, institutional liquidity provision, payments and custody. Although the specific investment amount and respective shareholding ratios were not disclosed, this capital injection marks a further acceleration of OKX's efforts to build a global financial technology platform.

Star Xu, founder and CEO of OKX, said: "The exchange is just our starting point, and we are gradually evolving into a broader global fintech platform." He added that the proceeds from this round of financing will support the company's continued growth and help it advance its plan to tokenize real world assets (RWA), thereby achieving breakthroughs in areas beyond traditional exchange business.

Diversified investment portfolio: stablecoins, liquidity and custody services

Circle: 作为 USDC 稳定币的发行人，Circle 的投资建立在双方长期的合作基础之上。USDC 已广泛应用于 OKX 的交易产品中。今年九月，Circle 与 OKX 扩大了 USDC 在现货、保证金和期货市场的交易覆盖范围，并推出了由 Circle 资助的“USDC 保证金增长计划”。此外，Circle 还在 OKX 开发的以太坊兼容 Layer 2 网络 X Layer 上部署了原生 USDC，通过其跨链传输协议实现了更高效的应用集成。

Ripple：Ripple 的 RLUSD 稳定币已通过 OKX 的统一订单簿进行交易。Ripple 高级副总裁 Jack McDonald 指出，稳定币正成为全球金融基础设施的核心组成部分，而像 OKX 这样的规模化平台将在推动这一转变中发挥重要作用。此次投资有望促进双方在稳定币、支付及机构市场领域的更多合作。

Qube Research & Technologies (QRT)：作为全球多策略投资管理公司，QRT 是 OKX 的主要交易对手方之一，为其提供流动性及风险承担能力。QRT 量化交易总监 Thomas Eaton 表示，此次投资基于对 OKX 的信心以及对数字资产全天候市场长期增长的看好。

渣打银行（SC Ventures）：Standard Chartered Bank is not only a participant in this investment, but also an important partner in OKX's institutional custody infrastructure. As early as April this year, OKX introduced BlackRock's BUIDL tokenized US Treasury fund under the framework of Standard Chartered Bank. Under this model, qualified institutional customers can use BUIDL as trading margin, while assets are independently managed by Standard Chartered Bank, and customers retain ownership and income. This "collateral mirroring" mechanism reduces the need to transfer underlying assets to exchanges and improves security.

Strategic synergy with ICE

Previously, OKX's strategic cooperation with Intercontinental Exchange Group (ICE) not only brought capital injection, but also gave ICE board seats. The two sides plan to carry out in-depth cooperation on regulated market infrastructure. OKX will provide ICE with spot pricing of cryptocurrencies for regulated futures products in the United States; at the same time, OKX users are expected to access ICE's futures products and tokenized New York Stock Exchange stocks after obtaining regulatory approval.

In May last year, the two sides also extended cooperation to commodities and agreed to use ICE's Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) benchmark prices to support OKX's oil perpetual contracts in specific jurisdictions.

Industry Outlook

With the launch of Circle's Arc blockchain main network in September this year and joining forces with institutional validators such as BlackRock, DTCC, Visa, Mastercard and Standard Chartered Bank, the integration of US dollar infrastructure and on-chain trading environment is becoming increasingly close. Alex Manson, CEO of SC Ventures, emphasized that institutional participation in digital assets requires sound infrastructure, including institutional custody, and OKX's partnership with Standard Chartered Bank reflects this trend.

Currently, OKX has not disclosed the specific allocation ratio of new funds in this round to each product line or market, but confirmed that the overall pre-investment valuation remains unchanged at US$25 billion. This series of actions shows that OKX is committed to building a comprehensive financial technology ecosystem that covers holding, payments and investment.