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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

Uncategorized

Alchemy Acquires Bware Labs for an Undisclosed Amount

Steve Payne
September 1st, 2024
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Transaction Overview

On August 29, 2024, Web3 development platform Alchemy announced its acquisition of Bware Labs, also a Web3 development platform that provides blockchain infrastructure and API services, for an undisclosed amount. 

 

Target: Bware Labs

Bware Labs is a Web3 infrastructure company that supports over thirty blockchain networks and operates more than 44 validators. The company serves over 100 enterprise customers, including CoinGecko, Fantom, and Connext. Bware Labs has formed strategic partnerships with leading blockchain projects such as Avalanche, Polygon, and Astar.

 

The company’s key offerings include the Blast API, which connects developers to 101 networks and 48 chains, along with various validator and bridging services, faucet connections, and governance proposals. Other offerings include App Chains, an application-specific blockchain that allows developers to specify their projects’ economies, governance, and consensus algorithms through features such as Enterprise Validator, dedicated RPC endpoints, and indexing.

 

In 2023, Bware Labs launched the $INFRA token.. The fully diluted market cap of $INFRA as of 9/1/2024 was $21.8M and the total circulating supply of 100M. Key allocations include 12.2M for the seed round, 12M for a Series A round, 20M for treasury, and 25M for protocol incentives. 

 

Bware Labs was founded in Romania in 2021 by Flavian Manea, Alexandru Minulescu, Matei Popp, and Radu Enoiu, and now has over 45 employees, mostly developers/engineers. The company raised a total of $6.9M in token and equity funding, with $900K in a Seed round led by Ascensive Assets and $6M in a Series A round with investors such as The Spartan Group, Woodstock Fund, Nexo, and Nabais Capital. Bware was last valued at $50M post-money in their Series A.

 

Buyer: Alchemy 

Alchemy is a Web3 development platform that provides blockchain infrastructure and tools, such as APIs, SDKs, and node management, to support the development of decentralized applications across multiple blockchains. Alchemy has facilitated over $100 billion in on-chain transaction volume, paid $1.5 billion in royalties to NFT creators, has had over 100 million end users, and supports projects such as OpenSea, Axie Infinity, Polygon, and WorldCoin.

 

Their main offerings include APIs that support tokens, NFTs, transactions, and Web3 development for developers and infrastructure for rollups, integrations, and subgraphs for various blockchains. The company supports enterprise, NFT, gaming, and DeFi projects. 

 

Alchemy was founded in 2013 by Nikil Viswanathan and Joe Lau and now has over 280 employees. The company has raised $564M over five funding rounds in April 2019, December 2019, April 2021, October 2021, and February 2022, from lead investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Silver Lake, a16z, Coatue, and Addition, as well as angel investors like Peter Thiel, Will Smith, and Reid Hoffman. Alchemy was valued at $10.2B post-money in their last funding round.

 

Transaction Parameters

Alchemy agreed to acquire Bware for an undisclosed amount but revealed that it is their largest acquisition to date, increasing their headcount by 25%.

 

Alchemy has announced it will not take over Bware’s INFRA protocol and Bware announced that it will be stepping away from its role as a core contributor to the technology supported by the $INFRA token. 

 

Strategic Rationale

Alchemy’s acquisition of Bware Labs aims to enhance its blockchain infrastructure and expand globally. By integrating Bware Labs’ Blast API and decentralized infrastructure, Alchemy strengthens its platform and broadens its customer base through Bware’s existing partnerships with major blockchain networks like Polygon and Avalanche. Furthermore, the acquisition provides a path for Alchemy’s expansion into Europe. Bware’s presence in Europe, which is leading in crypto regulation via its MiCA rules, also offers a gateway to entry into other markets in the region.

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

This transaction makes strategic sense for Alchemy.  And as a leader in Web3 infrastructure with players like Consensys it has the capacity to start filling in holes in its delivery capabilities.

 

The Web2 hyperscalers all currently offer some Web3 infrastructure to  developers (usually covering only a handful of chains), and we expect to see them more active in M&A as demand for Web3 grows.