SBI places $76M bet on EDX as institutional crypto arms race intensifies
SBI Holdings has injected $76 million into U.S.-based EDX Markets, leading the company’s Series C round and sharpening the global contest to build institutional-grade crypto infrastructure. The Chicago-headquartered exchange and clearing platform disclosed the funding on July 7, 2026, saying the fresh capital will accelerate its push into trading, clearing, settlement, and regulated operations outside the United States.
According to EDX CEO Tony Acuña-Rohter, SBI served as the sole investor in the equity round, underscoring the Japanese financial group’s conviction in EDX’s business model. The firm did not reveal its valuation or further deal terms. EDX’s earlier backers include a roster of traditional finance heavyweights and venture firms such as Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, Fidelity Investments, Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, and other market participants. This is the first time EDX has publicly disclosed the size of a funding round.
Acuña-Rohter described SBI as a “strategic partner,” signaling that the deal is about more than just balance sheet runway. EDX operates an institutional-only crypto marketplace coupled with a central clearinghouse. In the U.S., its venue offers spot trading for professional investors, while its offshore arm, EDXM International, provides perpetual futures to eligible non-U.S. institutions. The company has deliberately modeled its architecture on traditional exchanges, separating execution, clearing, and custody to limit conflicts of interest and align with how major equities and derivatives markets function.
The new capital is earmarked for building out the underlying infrastructure that banks, trading firms, prime brokers, and other institutional clients require to participate in digital asset markets. EDX plans to strengthen its clearing workflows, upgrade settlement rails, and refine risk management systems that sit behind each transaction. It also aims to roll out additional products as more regulated institutions seek compliant, scalable access to crypto trading and derivatives.
SBI chairman Yoshitaka Kitao framed the investment as part of a broader strategy to cement “trusted market infrastructure” as the backbone of institutional crypto adoption. In SBI’s view, platforms like EDX are central to making digital assets palatable to regulated entities that demand transparent governance, rigorous risk controls, and clear oversight. The partnership aligns with SBI’s ongoing push into tokenization, stablecoins, and cross-border settlement rails.
Earlier in 2026, EDX introduced EDX FlowConnect, a crypto-as-a-service platform designed for financial institutions and fintechs that want to offer digital asset trading without operating a full-scale exchange. Through FlowConnect, clients can plug into EDX’s execution tools, liquidity pools, clearing, and settlement systems, effectively outsourcing the most complex and capital-intensive parts of the infrastructure stack. A portion of the Series C funding will be directed toward scaling this service, onboarding more institutions, and broadening its feature set.
In parallel, EDX has taken a major regulatory step: the company has applied to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish EDX Trust, National Association. The OCC recorded receipt of the application on March 26, 2026. If approved, the national trust bank would operate as a separately regulated entity responsible for custody, clearing, settlement, and risk management, running alongside EDX’s trading venues but under a banking framework. This dual-entity structure echoes the way many traditional exchanges work with affiliated clearing and custody institutions.
Industry reports have linked the Series C round to EDX’s recent momentum in spot trading, perpetual futures, and post-trade services. The funding also overlaps with its collaboration with Ripple Prime, a prime brokerage platform serving institutional digital asset clients. Through this integration, professional traders and institutions can access EDX’s spot liquidity and EDXM International’s perpetual futures from a single prime brokerage interface, simplifying workflows and capital deployment across venues.
Ripple Prime confirmed the tie-up in May 2026, noting that both firms plan to use the RLUSD stablecoin for collateral and settlement on EDX. While RLUSD is being positioned as a core settlement asset, XRP itself has not assumed the primary settlement role in this arrangement. For SBI, which is closely linked to Ripple’s ecosystem, this aligns with its digital asset roadmap that includes the yen-based stablecoin JPYSC and support for dollar stablecoins such as RLUSD and USDC in the Japanese market.
The $76 million war chest strengthens EDX’s hand as it courts large global financial institutions that have so far approached crypto markets cautiously. With SBI now holding a strategic stake, EDX gains both capital and a distribution ally in Asia, particularly in Japan where SBI has long been a pioneer in digital assets and fintech. The exchange says its near-term priorities include delivering new products, expanding internationally, scaling FlowConnect, and securing regulatory approval for EDX Trust.
The deal also illustrates how the institutional crypto race is shifting from retail-focused exchanges to infrastructure built specifically for professional participants. Rather than competing on meme coin listings or trading incentives, firms like EDX are vying on regulatory clarity, best-execution standards, low-latency connectivity, and robust risk management. This is the segment where large banks, asset managers, and market makers are more likely to engage, especially as tokenized assets and stablecoins begin to intersect with traditional securities and payment flows.
SBI’s move can be read as a bet that market structure will ultimately converge: digital asset trading will look and feel much like equities, FX, and derivatives trading today, with clear separation of roles among exchanges, clearinghouses, custodians, and prime brokers. By backing EDX, SBI positions itself inside that future architecture, potentially influencing how liquidity, collateral, and cross-border flows are organized in the next wave of institutional adoption.
For institutions, the combination of an exchange, a central clearing service, and a potential national trust bank under one umbrella is significant. It offers a path to consolidate fragmented crypto workflows that currently cross multiple unaligned venues and service providers. A bank or hedge fund could, in theory, execute trades, clear positions, custody assets, and manage collateral using a cohesive, regulated stack, simplifying both operational risk and regulatory reporting.
The EDX-Ripple Prime partnership adds another layer of appeal: prime brokerage-style access. Traditional markets rely heavily on prime brokers to provide leverage, financing, risk netting, and unified reporting across exchanges. Bringing a similar model to crypto, with integrated spot and perpetuals access plus stablecoin-based settlement, makes the asset class more familiar to institutional desks that are used to centralized risk views and capital-efficient margining.
At the same time, the pursuit of an OCC charter reflects intensifying pressure on crypto intermediaries to submit to bank-like regulation if they want to serve large institutions. A national trust bank license would place EDX Trust under stringent supervisory regimes, capital requirements, and compliance expectations. While that raises operational costs, it can also lower perceived counterparty risk for clients compared to dealing with lightly regulated entities.
SBI’s own stablecoin agenda hints at how this ecosystem might evolve. With JPYSC on one side and support for dollar-based stablecoins like RLUSD and USDC on the other, SBI appears to be building rails for multi-currency settlement that could plug straight into platforms such as EDX. In that model, stablecoins become the grease for cross-border payments, collateral movements, and intraday liquidity for trading firms across time zones. EDX’s focus on settlement and risk controls positions it to be a key node in such a network.
Competitive pressure is mounting from other institutional platforms backed by major financial brands, but EDX’s blend of traditional-exchange structure, strong cap table, and alignment with both U.S. banking regulators and Asian financial groups gives it a differentiated profile. How quickly it can convert that advantage into revenue growth will depend on regulatory timelines, the pace of institutional adoption, and the broader volatility of the crypto market.
For now, the Series C round signals that the institutionalization of crypto continues despite regulatory uncertainty and cyclical downturns. Capital is flowing into infrastructure that mirrors traditional finance rather than into purely speculative plays. As EDX executes on its roadmap-expanding FlowConnect, building EDX Trust, integrating stablecoin settlement, and deepening prime brokerage partnerships-it will serve as a bellwether for whether large-scale, regulated institutional participation in digital assets is finally moving from theory to practice.