The LSE Directory / Data providers
Alpaca is a US-based financial technology company that operates as an API-first broker-dealer, giving developers programmatic access to trading and market data across US equities, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrency. Its two core products are the Trading API, aimed at individual algorithmic traders and quant developers who place orders, backtest, and paper-trade programmatically, and the Broker API, a white-label brokerage infrastructure layer that lets fintech companies embed account opening, trading, and custody into their own apps without becoming a broker-dealer themselves. Brokerage execution and custody are handled by regulated US entities, Alpaca Securities LLC for equities and options, and Alpaca Crypto LLC for crypto. Within data and brokerage infrastructure, Alpaca's differentiator is that it sells the rails rather than a retail-facing app: its own trading interface exists largely as a reference implementation, and most of its business is B2B, licensing the same infrastructure that fintechs and robo-advisors use to launch investing products under their own brand. It is a self-clearing broker, a member of DTCC, FICC, and OCC, which is unusual for a company of its size and gives it direct control over settlement rather than relying on a third-party clearing broker. It has also pushed into tokenized-equity infrastructure alongside its core trading and market-data APIs. Alpaca began in 2015 as AlpacaDB, an open-source time-series database project (MarketStore) founded by Yoshi Yokokawa and Hitoshi Harada in San Mateo, California. The company pivoted to brokerage services starting in 2017, registering Alpaca Securities LLC and receiving FINRA approval in 2018, then went through Y Combinator's Winter 2019 batch. Alpaca Securities LLC is a member of FINRA and SIPC, giving customers up to $500,000 in SIPC protection, and Alpaca Crypto LLC is registered with FinCEN as a money services business. As of early 2026 the company states its infrastructure powers more than 9 million brokerage accounts through partnerships with 300-plus organizations across 40-plus countries. In January 2026, Alpaca raised a $150 million Series D led by Drive Capital at a $1.15 billion valuation, with participation from Citadel Securities, Kraken, and the venture arms of BNP Paribas and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, bringing its total outside funding to more than $320 million; the round included a $40 million credit line, and Alpaca said its annual recurring revenue exceeds $100 million with year-over-year revenue more than doubling. The company said the capital would go toward international expansion, cybersecurity, and new trading features, and separately stated its rails power the large majority of the current market for tokenized US equities and ETFs.
