Kraken acquires Capitalise.ai as crypto companies buy AI startups

Crypto exchange Kraken just scooped up Israel-based startup Capitalise.ai—a no-code trading automation platform that turns your casual text commands into full-blown executable strategies. The deal amount? Undisclosed, of course. This tech is set to drop into Kraken Pro later this year, per their blog post on Aug. 20. Founded in 2015, Capitalise.ai built a beast that converts everyday language into strategies and supports execution across equities, crypto, forex, futures, and options. Once integrated, Kraken Pro users can design, backtest, and automate trades across digital and traditional markets without touching a single line of code. Shannon Kurtas, Kraken’s head of exchange, said: 'This acquisition gives Kraken Pro clients a new way to act on ideas in real time,' aiming to make advanced strategies accessible to the masses. This move follows Kraken’s $1.5 billion purchase of US futures platform NinjaTrader back in March.

Major crypto exchanges, analytics firms, and miners are going all-in on AI acquisitions, making artificial intelligence the new core for trading, compliance, and infrastructure. On Jan. 13, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis grabbed Alterya, an AI-powered fraud detection startup, in a deal worth about $150 million. Alterya’s real-time monitoring system flags suspicious activity, beefing up compliance tools for banks and regulators. Later that month, Web3 super-app xPortal snagged Alphalink, a German startup specializing in AI-driven mobile interfaces for crypto, bringing their team in-house to expand AI tools for DeFi and digital identity. The acquisition spree ramped up in recent weeks: On Aug. 11, Tether and video platform Rumble announced a joint $1.17 billion bid to acquire Germany-based Northern Data, an AI and high-performance computing infrastructure provider. The deal folds Northern Data’s GPU cloud and data center units into Rumble, with Tether committing to multi-year GPU purchases. The same day, Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings struck a $168 million deal to acquire a 64% stake in French AI firm Exaion, a subsidiary of state-owned utility EDF. Exaion’s high-performance computing biz partners with Nvidia and Deloitte, and MARA has an option to raise its stake to 75% by 2027. Not everyone’s buying—Coinbase chose partnership over acquisition, teaming up with Perplexity AI in July to feed its COIN50 index data into the search engine, embedding crypto data into real-time AI responses.