S&P Global has agreed to acquire OpenZeppelin, the blockchain security company behind one of the industry's most widely used open-source smart contract libraries, in a move that extends the financial data, ratings and benchmarks provider's digital asset capabilities.

The deal, announced Thursday, is aimed at complementing S&P Global's risk assessment and ecosystem development capabilities in the digital asset market, the company said. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the transaction remains subject to closing conditions, according to the official announcement. The acquisition brings a foundational piece of blockchain development infrastructure under one of the world's largest providers of credit ratings, data and benchmark indexes.

"Our digital assets strategy centers on bringing trusted data, benchmarks and transparent risk assessment to markets as they move onchain," said Yann Le Pallec, president of S&P Global Ratings. He added that OpenZeppelin would expand the company's smart contract and onchain technology risk assessment capabilities.

Founded in 2015, OpenZeppelin develops open-source smart contract software and provides security assessments for blockchain projects and financial institutions. Its smart contracts have facilitated more than $37 trillion in value transferred, and the company has completed more than 900 security engagements, according to the announcement. The firm's contracts library has become a standard building block for developers working on Ethereum and other EVM-compatible blockchains.

OpenZeppelin said its contracts library and other open-source applications will remain free and publicly maintained on GitHub. The platform will operate as a separate S&P Global business unit, with co-founder and CEO Demian Brener continuing to lead the company while reporting to Le Pallec.

The acquisition is the latest step in S&P Global's digital asset expansion. The New York-based company, best known for its credit ratings and benchmark indexes such as the S&P 500, began offering cryptocurrency index products through its S&P Dow Jones Indices joint venture in 2021. Combined with this week's Kaiko investment, the OpenZeppelin deal extends S&P Global's reach across two areas of the digital asset market: crypto market data infrastructure and smart contract security.

Earlier this week, S&P Global led a strategic investment in Kaiko, extending the Paris-based crypto market data provider's Series B funding to $110 million as it expands its data infrastructure for tokenized financial markets.