Crypto market maker Wintermute plans to invest approximately $1 billion in high-frequency trading and artificial intelligence data-center infrastructure over five years as it expands into stocks, commodities, and foreign exchange. The strategic pivot marks one of the most significant diversification efforts by a major crypto-native firm.
The London-based firm wants non-crypto markets to generate more than 50% of revenue by the end of 2027, up from 10% currently. The investment will be funded with retained earnings, according to the company's founder and CEO.
Why Wintermute Is Looking Beyond Crypto
The push follows a significant drop in crypto trading activity. Wintermute's average daily trading volume fell to about $10 billion this year from $15 billion in 2025, as bitcoin declined to roughly half its October peak above $126,000. The broader crypto market has been in a prolonged downturn, with firms across the industry cutting staff and reconsidering their strategies.
Despite the downturn, the privately held company was profitable in 2025 and expects to remain profitable this year. Wintermute recorded $582 million in profit during the 2021 crypto bull market. Institutions accounted for a record 72% of spot trading volume on its over-the-counter desk in the first half of 2026, suggesting that even as overall volumes declined, institutional participation increased.
Competing With Traditional Market Makers
The investment would help Wintermute compete with established firms including Jane Street, Citadel Securities, and XTX Markets. XTX, which trades more than $250 billion a day, announced plans last year to spend approximately $1.15 billion on five data centers in Finland. Jane Street is also preparing to build and finance its own data center.
Wintermute will use the infrastructure to train quantitative models on large volumes of market data and increase its computing, storage, and networking capacity. The firm's CEO noted that competing in traditional markets requires more than reducing execution times by microseconds, signaling a deeper investment in research and technology.
A Broader Diversification Trend
Wintermute is not the only crypto firm looking beyond digital assets. The company 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.
The firm's U.S. affiliate secured broker-dealer status last week, allowing it to trade stocks and stock options and act as an authorized participant for exchange-traded funds. That regulatory milestone opens the door to a much broader range of traditional finance activities.
The AI Infrastructure Play
The AI data-center component of the investment reflects a broader trend of crypto firms leveraging their infrastructure expertise for AI workloads. The computational demands of training quantitative models and running high-frequency trading systems overlap significantly with the infrastructure used for crypto mining and blockchain operations.
Wintermute's $1 billion commitment places it among the firms betting that the convergence of AI, high-frequency trading, and crypto infrastructure will create new revenue streams. Whether non-crypto markets can drive 50% of revenue within two years remains an ambitious target, but the investment signals that some of the largest crypto-native firms are already planning for a future where crypto is just one part of their business.
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