Circle, Ripple and Standard Chartered Back OKX at $25 Billion

OKX sold equity at the price it got six months ago. The exchange said on 6 October that Circle, Ripple, Qube Research and Technologies and SC Ventures, Standard Chartered's investment arm, had come in at a $25 billion pre-money valuation. Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, led a strategic round at that same valuation in March, and this is an extension of it. No amount was disclosed, by OKX or by any of the four. Each of them was already a counterparty of the exchange before the money moved.

Four backers who were already customers

The commercial ties are the part the announcement leans on. Circle issues USDC, which runs across OKX trading products, and in September the exchange widened USDC access to spot, margin and futures markets under a margin growth program. Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin sits in OKX's unified order book. Qube Research and Technologies works as an institutional counterparty, supplying liquidity and risk capacity. Standard Chartered handles institutional custody and collateral; one account dates its facilitation of BlackRock's BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund as margin collateral to April, through a mirrored arrangement begun in 2025. That detail appears in a single write-up and is not confirmed elsewhere. The bank already sells into the region directly, having opened spot bitcoin and ether trading to UAE institutions.

A flat price, six months on

ICE's March cheque was about $200 million, a figure Fortune and news.bitcoin.com both carry and neither disputes. Six months later the valuation has not moved. Neither OKX nor any investor explained why the extension priced flat, and none of the accounts read here raises the question. One outlet adds that ICE took board representation in March alongside plans for regulated market infrastructure and futures pricing; that is single-sourced and stands unconfirmed. ICE has been buying into this market in pieces, including a stake in tZERO and a licence on 103 patents.

Stablecoins pointed at emerging markets

Star Xu, who founded OKX and runs it, framed the round as a change of category.

"The exchange was our starting point, and we are evolving into a broader global financial technology platform," Xu said.

Three outlets carry that sentence identically. A fourth renders his remark as a paraphrase about comprehensive financial technology infrastructure, which is not the same wording, and the verbatim version is the one used here. The product launched beside the round is OKX Money, a standalone consumer app aimed at Latin America, Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. It takes funding in more than 50 currencies, converts into USDC, USDT or USDG, and adds savings, transfers and card payments, with up to 10% a year offered on eligible USDG balances. Two accounts describe the app and they broadly match. Xu has also been quoted on it more plainly, saying the vision is "hold it, pay with it, invest it, and grow it," though only one outlet carries that line.

What the announcement leaves out

OKXICE, the joint venture with ICE, has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to run a venue for round-the-clock trading of tokenized American stocks, settled in stablecoins on X Layer, a chain tied to OKX. The size of that list is unsettled. Fortune says more than 60 equities and one other account says 63; the two do not reconcile, and neither gives a ticker. The company's U.S. history is relevant to a filing of this kind. An OKX operating entity pleaded guilty in 2025 to running an unlicensed money-transmitting business and paid $504 million in penalties and forfeiture, a figure that appears in one of the accounts read and in none of the others. What the extension actually raised is not public. Neither is the closing date, the post-money valuation, nor any plan to list.