Kraken Parent Payward Plans Tokenized Access to U.S. IPOs

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, plans to offer eligible retail investors access to U.S.-listed initial public offerings through tokenized shares. The company said customers of Kraken and other members of its xStocks Alliance will soon be able to seek allocations at the IPO price, rather than waiting to buy shares after public trading begins.

The plan matters because IPO allocations have typically been dominated by institutional investors, private banks and wealthy clients. Payward is positioning tokenization as a way to broaden access to capital markets, especially as investors watch for potential high-profile listings from companies such as SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI.

Under the proposed model, investors would submit non-binding indications of interest before an IPO. Payward would then aggregate demand across participating exchanges and work with underwriting syndicates to secure allocations. After a company lists, the shares would be tokenized and distributed through participating platforms.

Payward said the tokenized shares would be backed one-for-one by the underlying stock, with that stock held by a regulated custodian. The company also said its xStocks framework already supports tokenized equities and has processed more than $30 billion in transaction volume and over $6 billion in onchain settlements across more than 125,000 holders.

The company expects the first tokenized IPO offerings to become available through Kraken and other xStocks Alliance members in the coming weeks. Payward also said it will only offer IPOs where it has secured allocations for investors, but IPO participation can still involve uncertainty because allocations may be oversubscribed, offering prices can change and newly listed shares can be volatile.