Financial technology startup AlpacaDB Inc. today announced that it has raised $150 million in funding at a $1.15 billion valuation. The Series D round was led by Drive Capital and also drew contributions from more than a dozen other backers, including the venture capital arms of BNP Paribas and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, two of the world’s largest banks. This latest raise brings Alpaca’s total outside funding to more than $340 million.
Providing brokerage accounts—accounts that enable investors to hold and trade assets such as stocks—requires banks to build specialized software. They must then secure regulatory approvals for that software and protect it from cyberattacks. San Mateo, California-based Alpaca offers a cloud platform designed to ease this complex task.
The company provides the essential software building blocks necessary to launch brokerage accounts through an application programming interface (API). According to Alpaca, embedding their API into a financial application requires significantly less effort than creating everything from scratch. Additionally, it removes the need for developers to maintain the underlying infrastructure.
Several features in Alpaca’s API aim to simplify the management of cash reserves. The U.S. government insures depository money up to a limit of $250,000 per bank. With Alpaca’s API, brokerage account providers can increase this coverage limit to $1 million by spreading client funds across multiple banks.
Alpaca’s platform also promises to help customers boost yields. Investors with Alpaca-powered accounts can trade more than 11,000 stocks. The API enables banks to offer fractional shares—financial instruments that allow account holders to purchase a fraction of a share. For larger investors, Alpaca offers the option to access debt for use in trading.
Moreover, Alpaca supports not only traditional securities but also tokenized stocks. A tokenized stock is a digital asset whose value derives from a company’s share price. Fintech startups can use Alpaca’s API to issue tokenized stocks, process trades, and perform related tasks.
In addition to stocks, Alpaca supports a diverse range of financial instruments. Users can trade in more than 20 cryptocurrencies as well as fixed income assets, a category that includes securities such as U.S. Treasury bonds.
Alpaca’s network also provides a data streaming service—enabling applications to distribute information to other systems in near real-time. Banks can leverage Alpaca’s data to power investment algorithms that automatically execute pre-defined actions in response to specific events.
The company revealed on the occasion of its funding round that its platform currently powers more than 9 million brokerage accounts. Alpaca plans to use the new capital to expand its presence in international markets, enhance cybersecurity controls, and develop new trading features.
https://siliconangle.com/2026/01/14/alpaca-raises-150m-grow-brokerage-account-management-platform/