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Payward Acquires Magic Labs Embedded Wallet Business
Payward Acquires Magic Labs Embedded Wallet Business

Transaction Overview
On July 27, 2026, Payward, the B2B crypto infrastructure parent behind the crypto exchange Kraken, announced a definitive agreement to acquire wallet-as-a-service business Magic Labs. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Target: Magic Labs (Wallet Infrastructure)
Founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco, Magic Labs is a wallet-as-a-service infrastructure provider that enables businesses to create non-custodial embedded wallets for their end users. The company was co-founded by Sean Li, Arthur Jen, and Jaemin Jin.

Magic’s core offering is a developer-facing SDK and API that provides embedded wallets with passwordless authentication via email, social login, passkeys, or SSO. The product suite includes 1) API Wallets for server-side management with security and customizable key sharding, and 2) Embedded Wallets for client-side non-custodial key management. As of July 2026, the platform supports more than 30 blockchain networks and provides a white-label UI, fiat onramps, and transaction signing.

As of July 2026, Magic Labs had provisioned more than 60 million wallets and served more than 200,000 developers across more than 18,000 applications. Clients include Polymarket, Naver, Helium, Forbes, WalletConnect, Mattel, and Immutable. During the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Polymarket processed over $3 billion in prediction market transactions with zero downtime, powered by Magic’s embedded wallets. Magic said it had supported over $8.9 billion in cumulative transaction volume for Polymarket as of November 2025.

Magic Labs has raised a total of $83 million in disclosed venture funding across 4 rounds, with significant investors including PayPal Ventures, Northzone, Tiger Global, Digital Currency Group, CoinFund, and Placeholder VC.

In November 2024, Magic Labs announced Newton, a chain unification network built in collaboration with Polygon Labs, expanding beyond wallet infrastructure into cross-chain protocol development. In November 2025, Magic Labs integrated the Newton Protocol SDK across its developer network. The company described Newton Protocol as “the authorization layer for on-chain finance.” These moves preceded the company’s decision to divest its wallet business and refocus entirely on protocol development.

Buyer: Payward
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, Payward is a private B2B crypto infrastructure holding company. Payward operates Kraken, one of the longest-running cryptocurrency exchanges, alongside NinjaTrader, xStocks, Bitnomial, and CF Benchmarks. The company is led by co-CEOs Arjun Sethi and Dave Ripley.

Most relevant to this transaction, Payward operates Payward Services, a B2B infrastructure platform that provides institutions with access to Payward’s trading, custody, settlement, and payments infrastructure via API. The acquisition of Magic Labs adds embedded wallet infrastructure to their offering. In April 2026, Payward launched a white-label fiat-to-crypto onramp through a partnership with Onramper, making embedded wallet infrastructure a natural adjacent capability.

Payward has been expanding beyond its core exchange through acquisition. In 2025, the company acquired NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion (retail futures, M&A Alert) and agreed to acquire Backed Finance (tokenized equities, Press). In 2026, it acquired Magna (token lifecycle management, Press), completed the acquisition of Bitnomial for up to $550 million (regulated derivatives, M&A Alert), and agreed to acquire Reap for $600 million (card issuance and payments, M&A Alert). Including this transaction, Payward has announced or completed 8 acquisitions since early 2025, committing several billion dollars to platform expansion ahead of its planned public listing.

For the full year of 2025, Payward reported adjusted revenue of $2.2 billion, a 33% increase year over year from $1.5 billion in 2024. Trading-based revenue accounted for 47% of the total, with the remaining 53% from asset-based services, including payments, custody, yield, and financing.

In November 2025, Payward raised $800 million at a $20 billion post-money valuation in a round backed by Citadel Securities, Jane Street, and Apollo Global Management, and confidentially filed an S-1 with the SEC ahead of a planned IPO. In April 2026, Deutsche Börse Group made an additional $200 million strategic investment in the company.

Transaction Parameters
Payward has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the wallet-as-a-service business of Magic Labs for an undisclosed amount. The transaction includes Magic Labs’ embedded wallet business, including wallet clients and associated infrastructure.

The transaction is part of a broader corporate restructuring in which Magic Labs is rebranding as Newton Labs to focus on the Newton Protocol. The two companies will remain independent following the close.

Architect Partners served as the exclusive financial advisor to Magic Labs.

Strategic Rationale
Payward is acquiring Magic’s embedded wallet business to augment Payward Services’ B2B offering. Payward Services gives partners a single integration point for trading, custody, tokenized assets, on/off-ramps, and derivatives. The wallet, the account layer where end users actually hold assets and interact with onchain products, was a critical piece partners still had to source from a third party. Magic brings that layer in-house with proven infrastructure: a TEE-based signing solution, an embedded integration layer, and a developer SDK that together have provisioned more than 60 million wallets and supported over $10 billion in stablecoin volume for 200,000+ developers.

On Day 1, Payward can offer fintechs, enterprises, and financial institutions a complete embedded onchain offering under a single provider, spanning wallet provisioning, onboarding, funding, trading, custody, and settlement, without stitching together multiple vendors. Every embedded wallet also becomes a distribution point that routes transaction volume into the rest of Payward’s infrastructure, deepening the non-trading, less volatile revenue that already accounts for 53% of Payward’s total as it heads toward a public listing.

Architect Partners’ Observations
This transaction marks the near-completion of a consolidation wave in embedded wallet infrastructure. In roughly one year, Fireblocks acquired Dynamics ($90M), Consensys acquired Web3Auth ($50M), Stripe acquired Privvy, Ripple acquired Palisade, and Paxos acquired Fordefi. Now each group has its own independent wallet infrastructure provider, and Payward has acquired the category’s pioneer. The market has reached a clear verdict: embedded wallets are foundational infrastructure for every onchain product, and they are a layer of a full-stack platform rather than a standalone business.

The logic is simple: the wallet is becoming the account primitive of onchain finance. Whoever provisions the wallet sits at the front of the customer relationship and routes the volume that follows. For platforms whose trading revenue is inherently cyclical, owning the onboarding layer converts market position into durable, recurring B2B infrastructure revenue.

Sources
Press Release, Payward Services, PitchBook

Alerts

Talos to Acquire Coin Metrics for over $100M

Eric Risley
July 20th, 2025
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Transaction Overview

On July 16th, 2025, Talos, a crypto trading smart order router, announced its acquisition of Coin Metrics, a crypto data and data analytics provider, for over $100M.

 

Target: Coin Metrics

Founded in 2017, Boston-based Coin Metrics was one of the first firms to combine on-chain network analytics with institutional-grade market data, carving out a reputation as the “crypto financial intelligence leader” for global capital markets. Today, the platform spans four complementary product lines:

 

  • Network Intelligence (Network Data Pro) tracking over 70 public blockchains

 

  • Market Data Feed normalized across 25–30 of the world’s largest spot and derivatives venues, with real-time and historical order book depth, trades, and quotes

 

  • ATLAS blockchain search covering 190+ crypto assets down to transaction-level granularity with a single API

 

  • A full suite of benchmarks and reference rates, including the Datanomy digital-asset classification system built in partnership with Goldman Sachs and MSCI, now delivering IOSCO-compliant USD prices on 200+ assets

 

The company’s data, research, and index feeds are used by over 500 banks, asset managers, and regulators worldwide, with marquee relationships that include Goldman Sachs, Fidelity Digital Assets, MSCI, Nasdaq, BNY Mellon, Franklin Templeton, and State Street. Clients use the platform for trade execution analytics, portfolio valuation, risk monitoring, and product structuring.

 

With approximately 90 employees, Coin Metrics remains privately held and does not disclose revenue figures. The firm has raised a total of $64.6 million across four rounds, including a $35 million Series C in April 2022 led by Acrew Capital (Mark Kranak) and BNY Mellon at a $315M post-money valuation. Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, Brevan Howard, and Avon Ventures also participated in that round.

 

Coin Metrics’ main competitors include other trading data providers such as IntoTheBlock, Kaiko, Four Pillars, Amberdata, InnoDT, CoinAPI, and Glassnode.

 

Buyer: Talos

Founded in 2018, New York-based Talos pioneered an institutional-grade smart order router that ensures best execution across crypto trading venues. Its offerings cover everything from liquidity aggregation and algorithmic execution to post-trade analytics and treasury settlement. The modular platform now spans five core product lines:

 

  • Trading & Smart Order Routing that normalizes order book depth across 60+ spot, derivatives, and DeFi venues through a single OEMS API

 

  • White Label & Prime Connectivity for banks, brokers, and fintechs that need crypto trading

 

  • Portfolio Management & Risk, bolstered by the 2024 acquisitions of Cloudwall and D3X Systems

 

  • On-chain DeFi Access via the May 2024 acquisition of Skolem

 

  • Data & Post-Trade Analytics, which will be further strengthened by the recent announcement to acquire Coin Metrics

 

The platform’s reach is reflected in the numbers. Talos has over 80 provider integrations, 3,800 tradeable symbols, and $350 billion in cumulative volume processed since launch, with the system regularly absorbing 5–10x average daily flow during volatile sessions without downtime. Talos counts among its clients global buy- and sell-side heavyweights, including Citi, BNY Mellon, Wells Fargo, Cumberland/DRW, and Nubank—part of the 300+ institutions that rely on its stack for price discovery, execution, and settlement.

 

Talos remains privately held, and specific revenue figures are undisclosed. However, venture filings report a $40 million Series A financing in May 2021 led by Andreessen Horowitz, PayPal Ventures, and Fidelity, followed by a $105 million Series B in May 2022 led by General Atlantic that valued the firm at $1.25 billion and added new strategic backers from Wall Street’s largest banks. Today, the company has roughly 170 employees across New York, London, and Singapore, with a talent base skewed toward engineering and client success.

 

Transaction Parameters

Talos will acquire 100% of Coin Metrics following the close of their deal valued at over $100 million. 

 

Previous comparable transactions include: Coindesk | CCData & CryptoCompare (M&A Alert), Binance | CoinMarketCap (M&A Alert),  Amberdata | Genesis Volatility.

 

Strategic Rationale

By integrating Coin Metrics’ on-chain analytics and benchmark indices directly into Talos’s execution and portfolio management stack, the result is a seamless “data-to-trade” workflow for institutions.

 

Additionally, Talos will acquire Coin Metrics’ deep roster of global bank and asset manager clients, unlocking immediate cross-sell opportunities and embedding a recurring, high-margin data revenue stream.

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

Strategically, at its simplest level, Coin Metrics supplies Talos with real-time pricing data across multiple execution venues. This data feeds Talos’s smart order routing algorithms, allowing it to offer best execution services to institutional investor clients.

 

This is fundamentally a vertical consolidation where Talos determined that owning, rather than contracting for, data-harvesting capabilities is important.

 

Architect Partners has been following the crypto data and data analytics sector for years (report linked here). Historically, the data and data analytics sector has created multibillion-dollar companies in traditional finance with groups like Refinitiv, S&P Global, FICO, etc. This has been challenging in the crypto industry, to date, due to the long hesitancy of traditional institutional investor participation. Our thesis remains that as the crypto industry matures, data and data analytics will begin to see demand emerge as this trend changes. It’s taken far longer than anticipated, but it will come.

 

Sources 

PitchBook, Talos Press Release, Coin Metrics Press Release, CB Insights, Coin Metrics Market Data, Talos Website, Tracxn, Linkedin