Wintermute plans $1 billion AI investment beyond crypto

Aug 12, 2026

Crypto market maker Wintermute plans to invest $1 billion over five years into high-frequency trading and artificial intelligence data-center infrastructure. Led by CEO Evgeny Gaevoy, the firm aims to expand into traditional finance, targeting over 50% of its revenue from non-crypto markets by 2027. This pivot is driven by a drop in Wintermute's daily crypto trading volumes to $10 billion in 2026, even as its institutional over-the-counter trading share hit a record 72%.

Wintermute $1 billion AI investment

▪Wintermute plans to use its new artificial intelligence infrastructure to train quantitative models on market data and increase computing, storage, and networking capacity.
▪Wintermute expects to fund its $1 billion high-frequency trading and artificial intelligence infrastructure investment using retained earnings.
▪Wintermute plans to invest approximately $1 billion over five years in high-frequency trading and artificial intelligence data-center infrastructure.

Traditional finance expansion plans

▪Wintermute aims for non-crypto markets to generate more than 50% of its revenue by the end of 2027, up from 10% as of August 2026.
▪Wintermute plans to double the staff in its 17-person New York office in 2027 and expand its global headcount by approximately 40%.
▪Wintermute's U.S. affiliate secured broker-dealer status in August 2026, enabling it to trade stocks and stock options and act as an authorized participant for exchange-traded funds.

Declining crypto trading volumes

▪Wintermute's average daily trading volume fell to approximately $10 billion in 2026 from $15 billion in 2025 as Bitcoin declined to roughly half its October peak.
▪Wintermute reported that on-chain spot volumes languished at two-year lows in May 2026, even as Bitcoin broke the $80,000 mark for the first time since January.

Record institutional OTC share

▪The number of unique tokens traded by Wintermute's institutional counterparties increased by 24% from the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2026, compared to a 76% increase for retail traders.
▪Institutional clients contributed a record 72% of Wintermute's spot over-the-counter trading volume in the first half of 2026, up from 59% in the first half of 2025.

Market maker infrastructure competition

▪Jane Street is preparing to build and finance its own data center to support its trading infrastructure.
▪XTX Markets announced plans in 2025 to spend approximately $1.15 billion on five data centers in Finland to support its high-frequency trading operations.

Tokenized traditional assets trend

▪Crypto.com announced its entry into tokenized traditional assets on August 12, 2026, offering initial access to 1,500 underlying stocks and funds.
▪The New York Stock Exchange partnered with Securitize on March 24, 2026, to develop blockchain-based trading infrastructure for tokenized shares of stocks and exchange-traded funds.