London-based crypto market maker Wintermute plans to invest approximately $1 billion over five years in high-frequency trading and artificial intelligence data-center infrastructure as it expands into stocks, commodities, and foreign exchange, according to a Bloomberg report citing founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy.

The firm aims for non-crypto markets to generate more than 50% of its revenue by the end of 2027, a significant increase from the current 10%. Wintermute expects to fund the spending through retained earnings. The pivot reflects a broader trend among crypto-native firms diversifying into traditional finance as digital-asset market cycles create revenue volatility.

The strategic shift comes amid a decline in crypto trading activity. Wintermute's average daily trading volume fell to roughly $10 billion this year, down from $15 billion in 2025, as bitcoin declined to approximately half of its October peak above $126,000. Institutions accounted for a record 72% of spot trading volume on its over-the-counter desk during the first half of 2026.

Gaevoy said the privately held company was profitable in 2025 and expects to remain so this year, without disclosing specific figures. Wintermute recorded $582 million in profit during the 2021 crypto bull market, according to Forbes.

The planned investment is intended to position Wintermute to compete with established firms including Jane Street, Citadel Securities, and XTX Markets. XTX, which trades more than $250 billion per day, announced plans last year to spend €1 billion (approximately $1.15 billion) on five data centers in Finland. Jane Street is also preparing to build and finance its own data center. The wave of infrastructure spending underscores how proprietary computing capacity has become a competitive frontier in algorithmic trading, where firms increasingly rely on owned hardware rather than cloud services to train models and execute strategies with minimal latency.

Wintermute will use the infrastructure to train quantitative models on large volumes of market data and to expand its computing, storage, and networking capacity. Gaevoy said that competing in traditional markets requires more than merely reducing execution times by microseconds.

The firm has been steadily broadening its product offerings. It began trading exchange-traded funds and perpetual futures tied to real-world assets in 2025 and added 24-hour exposure to West Texas Intermediate crude in March. It also opened a prediction-markets desk in early 2026.

Most recently, Wintermute's U.S. affiliate secured broker-dealer status last week, enabling it to trade stocks and stock options and to act as an authorized participant for exchange-traded funds. The regulatory milestone subjects the affiliate to SEC oversight and FINRA rules, marking a step-change in Wintermute's access to U.S. capital markets.

CoinDesk has reached out to Wintermute for comment.