Alpaca Becomes a Unicorn and Signals the Next Phase of Brokerage Infrastructure

This week, Alpaca quietly crossed a very loud milestone.

The US-based brokerage infrastructure provider announced a US$150 million Series D round, led by Drive Capital, valuing the company at US$1.15 billion and officially making Alpaca a unicorn. Alongside the equity raise, Alpaca also secured a US$40 million line of credit to support its balance sheet as it accelerates international expansion.

On the surface, this is another big fintech funding story. But look closer, and Alpaca’s rise tells us something much more important about where financial services, and especially investing, are heading.

Betting on the Pipes, Not the Apps

Alpaca isn’t a consumer brand. There’s no flashy trading app, no viral marketing, no Super Bowl ads.

Instead, Alpaca builds the pipes.

Founded to provide brokerage infrastructure via APIs, Alpaca enables fintech companies, banks, and platforms to offer access to stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, and fixed income products without having to build or operate brokerage systems themselves. It operates a self-clearing custody model, which gives it more control over the full brokerage stack and allows partners to scale faster.

Today, Alpaca works with more than 300 partners across over 40 countries, collectively supporting millions of brokerage accounts. If you’ve invested through a fintech app outside the US, or even inside it, there’s a growing chance Alpaca is powering that experience behind the scenes.

This funding round is a strong signal that investors believe the next wave of fintech value will be created not just at the user interface, but deep in the infrastructure layer.

A Who’s Who of Strategic Capital

The investor list reads less like a typical VC cap table and more like a map of global markets.

The round was led by Drive Capital, with co-founder and partner Chris Olsen joining Alpaca’s board. But what’s especially notable is the breadth of strategic investors participating: Citadel Securities, BNP Paribas’ Opera Tech Ventures, MUFG Innovation Partners, DRW Venture Capital, Kraken, and others spanning banks, trading firms, and crypto-native players.

Returning investors such as Portage, Horizons Ventures, and Diagram doubled down, while Revolut CTO Vlad Yatsenko joined as an angel investor. This is an endorsement from someone who knows firsthand how hard global financial infrastructure is to build.

This mix matters. Alpaca sits at the intersection of banks, fintechs, trading firms, and crypto platforms, and its cap table increasingly mirrors that position.

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Global First, Not US-Only

Many fintech infrastructure companies start in the US and cautiously expand outward. Alpaca has taken a more global-first approach.

Its partners operate across dozens of markets, often in regions where local brokerage infrastructure is fragmented, outdated, or expensive to build from scratch. For these companies, Alpaca isn’t just a vendor. It is an enabler of entirely new investment products.

CEO and co-founder Yoshi Yokokawa put it plainly:

“Our mission is to open financial services to everyone on the planet. We are building the global standard for brokerage infrastructure so our partners can bring investing to more people.”

The newly raised capital will go toward strengthening global infrastructure, expanding regulatory coverage, and developing institutional trading capabilities. These are all prerequisites for becoming that global standard.

TradFi Meets On-Chain Finance

One of the most interesting signals from Alpaca’s announcement is its explicit focus on integrating traditional and on-chain financial systems.

As tokenization, on-chain settlement, and crypto-native financial products mature, the line between traditional brokerage and blockchain infrastructure is blurring. Alpaca is positioning itself not as a TradFi or crypto company, but as connective tissue between the two.

That strategy helps explain why investors like Kraken and Citadel Securities can sit comfortably on the same cap table. If Alpaca succeeds, it won’t just power today’s investing apps. It could underpin entirely new asset classes and market structures.

Why This Matters for Fintech Builders

For founders and operators, Alpaca’s rise reinforces a few big takeaways:

• Infrastructure scales quietly but powerfully. Consumer apps may win headlines, but platforms that enable hundreds of products can create outsized impact.

• Regulatory depth is a moat. Brokerage, custody, and clearing are hard. Doing them across borders is even harder and increasingly valuable.

• The next phase of fintech is global. Growth isn’t just about adding users. It’s about enabling participation in markets that have long been underserved.

• TradFi and crypto convergence is real. The future will be hybrid, and infrastructure players are best positioned to bridge that gap.

Alpaca’s unicorn moment isn’t just about valuation. It’s about a broader shift in how investing is built, distributed, and accessed worldwide.

And for fintech, that’s a forward worth watching.

Fintech Forward