S&P Global expands crypto strategy with Kaiko funding, OpenZeppelin deal

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S&P Global crypto expansion

Highlights

On Sept. 14, S&P Global led Kaiko's $110 million Series B funding round alongside investors such as BNP Paribas and Coinbase Ventures.
On Sept. 17, S&P agreed to acquire OpenZeppelin, whose audited contracts have supported over $37 trillion in transferred value and $125.9 billion in total value locked.
By integrating Kaiko's crypto market data with OpenZeppelin's smart-contract audits, S&P aims to expand its influence over tokenized assets, stablecoins, and blockchain-based financial products.

Crypto data and code become strategic targets

As reported by Weiss Ratings, S&P Global has stepped further into digital assets through a funding round for crypto market-data firm Kaiko and an agreement to acquire smart-contract auditor OpenZeppelin. The moves build on the company's earlier work rating stablecoin redemption strength and publishing broader stablecoin stability assessments.

In early September 2026, S&P released the S&P Kaiko Digital Asset Indices, adding to a relationship that already connected its methodology with smart-contract integrity scoring by July. On Sept. 14, S&P led Kaiko's Series B round, which had raised a total of $110 million at the time of writing, with BNP Paribas, Broadridge, Coinbase Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Nasdaq Ventures, Royal Bank of Canada and Susquehanna among the investors.

Kaiko focuses on market data for digital assets and infrastructure for on-chain capital markets, where tokenized versions of Treasury bills, money-market funds, equities and bonds can trade on blockchain networks. The investment gives S&P deeper exposure to the same data and index businesses it already runs in traditional finance, adapted for markets that operate through smart contracts and continuous trading.

Three days later, on Sept. 17, S&P agreed to buy OpenZeppelin, which audits smart contracts before they go live. S&P and OpenZeppelin say contracts audited by the firm have supported more than $37 trillion in transferred value, including nine of the 10 largest stablecoins, while total value locked is cited at $125.9 billion; deal terms were not disclosed and the agreement is not yet finalized.

Tokenization raises new oversight questions

S&P's latest steps suggest the company is trying to close a long-standing gap between credit analysis and software risk in decentralized finance. Traditional ratings can assess issuers and reserves, but they do not by themselves determine whether the code behind a tokenized product is secure.

By pairing Kaiko's pricing and market data capabilities with OpenZeppelin's contract-audit expertise, S&P is positioning itself to play a larger role in the tokenization stack. That could give the company greater insight into tokenized funds, stablecoins and other blockchain-based financial products as institutional investors take the sector more seriously.

The strategy also highlights a governance issue for the industry. If one group helps rate issuers, supplies market data and evaluates the code underpinning tokenized products, investors may increasingly ask how independent those assessments remain and who ultimately scrutinizes the evaluator.

In our earlier article on Bitcoin’s “golden cross” technical signal, we explained how the 30-day moving average crossed above the 365-day moving average—an event that has occurred only a handful of times under that framework. We also outlined how previous occurrences were associated with major cycle turning points and discussed the upside scenario in which Bitcoin could work back toward its prior peak if the trend confirmation holds.

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