London-based crypto market maker Wintermute — one of the largest liquidity providers in digital asset markets, responsible for ensuring buyers and sellers can transact without large price gaps — plans to invest approximately $1 billion over the next five years in high-frequency trading and artificial intelligence data center infrastructure, as the firm seeks to expand well beyond its cryptocurrency roots into stocks, commodities, and foreign exchange markets.

CEO Evgeny Gaevoy told Bloomberg that non-crypto markets currently account for around 10% of the company's revenue, a figure he wants to see exceed 50% by the end of 2027. Wintermute intends to fund the investment using retained earnings.

Wintermute Plans $1B Investment in HFT and AI Infrastructure to Expand Into Traditional Markets According to Bloomberg, crypto market maker Wintermute plans to invest about $1 billion in high-frequency trading and AI data-center infrastructure over the next five years, funded… pic.twitter.com/xhDmXdgnB7

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 12, 2026

The strategic pivot comes as crypto trading activity has cooled. Wintermute's average daily trading volume has fallen to approximately $10 billion this year, down from $15 billion in 2025. Bitcoin has also declined to roughly half of its October peak above $126,000.

Despite the slowdown, Wintermute was profitable in 2025 and expects to remain so this year. Institutional clients accounted for a record 72% of spot trading volume on the firm's over-the-counter desk during the first half of 2026.

Entering a Competitive Arena

Wintermute is moving into a space dominated by established firms such as Jane Street, Citadel Securities, and XTX Markets. XTX currently trades more than $250 billion per day and has announced plans to spend approximately $1.15 billion on five data centers in Finland. Jane Street is also constructing its own data center.

Gaevoy emphasized that competing in these markets goes beyond shaving microseconds off execution times. Wintermute will use the new infrastructure to train quantitative models and expand its computing, storage, and networking capacity. In high-frequency trading, dedicated data center infrastructure is foundational: firms colocate servers near exchange matching engines to minimize signal travel time and run computationally intensive pricing models that require significant power and cooling resources.

The firm began trading exchange-traded funds and perpetual futures tied to real-world assets in 2025. In March, it added 24-hour exposure to West Texas Intermediate crude oil, and in early 2026 it opened a prediction markets desk.

Broker-Dealer Status Opens New Doors

Wintermute's US affiliate received broker-dealer status last week, enabling it to trade stocks and stock options and to act as an authorized participant for exchange-traded funds — a regulatory designation that permits direct participation in US securities markets and the creation and redemption of ETF shares. The company plans to expand its New York team, which currently stands at 17 employees, and to grow its global headcount by approximately 40% next year.

Wintermute is not alone in this broader shift across the digital asset industry. Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken have all expanded into tokenized stocks and other products linked to traditional financial markets. Riot Platforms, a Bitcoin mining company, signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic for 191 megawatts of data center capacity at its Rockdale campus in a deal valued at roughly $9.1 billion — further illustrating how crypto firms are increasingly aligning with the wider technology and finance sectors.

According to Forbes, Wintermute recorded $582 million in profit during the 2021 crypto bull market.