Kraken Parent Payward Delays IPO to Q2 2027, Talks Deal With Hyperliquid on US Perpetuals

Kraken’s parent company is telling investors to wait longer for a public listing, even as its exchange business quietly works on a deal that could reshape how Americans trade perpetual futures. Two separate reports this week give a fuller picture of where Payward stands: an IPO pushed further into the future, and merger talks with a rival that could bring one of crypto’s fastest-growing derivatives platforms into the regulated US market.

The IPO timeline keeps slipping

Payward confidentially filed its S-1 registration with the SEC back in November 2025, then paused the process in March 2026, citing weak crypto market conditions and softer trading volumes. The company is now reportedly targeting the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest — another significant push-back from where things stood even a few months ago. The delay lines up with a broader pattern across recent crypto-adjacent listings, where soft aftermarket performance from newly public digital-asset companies has made investors and issuers alike more cautious about timing. Payward’s underlying numbers are mixed: second-quarter 2026 adjusted revenue came in at $508 million, up 17% year-over-year, but adjusted EBITDA fell to $23 million, a 71% drop from a year earlier — the kind of profitability slide that tends to make IPO windows harder to time well.

Bulking up before going public

While the IPO waits, Payward has kept acquiring. The company bought retail futures platform NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion in 2025, and separately picked up Bitnomial, a CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange and clearinghouse, in a deal reported at up to $550 million. That acquisition also brought Breakout, a proprietary trading platform for qualified users, under the Payward umbrella — and it is Bitnomial’s regulatory status that now matters for the company’s next move.

The Hyperliquid conversation

Hyperliquid Labs is reportedly in advanced discussions with Payward about using Bitnomial as the regulated on-ramp for bringing a selection of Hyperliquid-linked perpetual futures to US traders. Hyperliquid’s decentralized, permissionless design has historically been the exact thing keeping it out of the US market, since regulators have been wary of a platform with no central operator to hold accountable for manipulation or sanctions compliance. Routing a limited set of Hyperliquid-linked contracts through Bitnomial — which would handle all compliance and oversight itself — offers a structural workaround: US users get regulated access to Hyperliquid-linked pricing without touching the permissionless platform directly. Payward has reportedly already sketched the basic structure out to the CFTC, though people close to the discussions estimate the interpretive rulemaking needed around custody and trade routing could take 10 to 12 months even under favorable conditions.

Two stories, one company

Taken together, the delayed IPO and the Hyperliquid talks describe a company playing a longer game than its original public-listing ambitions suggested. Payward looks to be using the extra runway before going public to lock in new revenue lines and regulatory relationships — Bitnomial chief among them — that could make a future listing a more compelling pitch than it would be today.

Corporate timelines and regulatory processes are subject to change without notice, and this article is for informational purposes only, not investment advice. Perpetual futures trading involves substantial leverage risk. To learn how perpetual futures contracts work, see coin680’s Bitcoin Academy.