Brokerage-infrastructure fintech Alpaca has raised $135 million in an equity round led by Peak XV, the company announced on 16 July 2026. Additional participants in the round include Elefund, Unbound and Opera Tech Ventures, the venture arm of BNP Paribas Group. The financing extends the roster of high-profile backers behind Alpaca as it builds out its position in the brokerage-as-a-service market.
Alongside the equity raise, Alpaca said its overall new financing totals $435 million once debt financing is included, primarily provided by Payward, the parent of Kraken, and Bank of Montreal. The combined structure reflects the balance-sheet-heavy nature of the brokerage business Alpaca is building for its clients, where warehousing, settlement and margin financing require dedicated funding lines alongside equity capital.
AGENT-FIRST AND TOKENISED MARKETS FOCUS
Proceeds from the round will be used to accelerate what Alpaca describes as agent-first brokerage and API-first prime brokerage infrastructure for tokenised markets and AI-native financial services. The framing points to a strategy aimed at positioning Alpaca as the underlying stack for a new generation of automated and AI-driven trading applications, in addition to the existing base of brokerage-as-a-service customers.
The agent-first framing echoes broader industry themes around autonomous software agents interacting with financial services on behalf of end users or institutions. Building brokerage plumbing that is optimised for programmatic access is a natural extension of Alpaca's existing API-centric positioning. It also aligns with the direction of travel across the wider capital markets technology stack, where automation and agent-based workflows are increasingly central.
The push into tokenised markets sits alongside the company's core brokerage-as-a-service offering, opening exposure to a still-emerging category of digital representations of traditional securities. The mix of AI-native and tokenisation themes is intended to position Alpaca at the intersection of two of the most closely watched narratives in capital markets technology, giving investors a clear thesis around future growth.
VALUATION STEP-UP AND STRATEGIC BACKERS
The round follows Alpaca's $150 million Series D at a $1.15 billion valuation in January 2026, marking a further capital raise within the same year. The participation of Peak XV as lead investor brings a globally recognised venture platform into the shareholder register, alongside earlier backers Elefund and Unbound. The pace of successive rounds reflects the appetite investors have shown for the brokerage-infrastructure story that Alpaca has built.
The involvement of Opera Tech Ventures, the venture arm of BNP Paribas Group, gives Alpaca a strategic bank-affiliated investor with deep familiarity with the trading and markets business. That participation, together with the debt financing provided by Payward and BMO, points to a shareholder and creditor base that spans banking, digital assets and technology venture capital. The mix underlines the strategic breadth of the coalition around the company.
The scale of the combined equity and debt package, at $435 million, underlines the capital intensity of building out prime brokerage infrastructure at scale. Alpaca's messaging on prime broking, tokenised markets and AI-native financial services frames the raise as investment in becoming a foundational layer for the next phase of client-facing trading technology, spanning agentic workflows and programmatic access via its APIs.