Kraken has announced that it has purchased Israel-based AI startup, Capitalise.ai. for an undisclosed amount. In the coming months, the exchange will integrate the capabilities of Capitalise.ai into its Kraken Pro service to offer an array of automated features. The development comes at a time when multiple crypto firms are rushing to crack partnership and acquisition deals with AI companies as Web3 and AI show signs of convergence.
Capitalse.ai, founded in 2015, operates as a no-code trading automation platform. The Tel Aviv-headquartered firm developed a “natural language platform”, capable of converting basic text commands into implementable trading strategies across equities, crypto, futures, options, and more.
For Kraken, this acquisition has created an opportunity for it to expand its service portfolio for more experienced traders who use its Pro service, launched in December 2022. Once Capitalise.ai is stitched within the Kraken Pro service, traders will be able to automate sophisticated strategies without having to write any code, just simple text.
Shannon Kurtas, the head of Kraken exchange said the step of loading up Pro with AI capabilities will “democratize” scalable and advanced trading strategies — which have long been concentrated in the hands of a few up until now.
“This acquisition gives Kraken Pro clients a powerful new way to act on ideas in real time: testing, optimizing, and executing bespoke strategies with unprecedented speed and confidence,” Kurtas noted.
As part of the acquisition, Capitalise.ai’s co-founders will join Kraken along with other key product and engineering team members to work with the Kraken business unit.
The rush to move into the AI space seems to have intensified among crypto players, costing them millions of dollars.
In January this year for instance, Chainalysis purchased AI-based fraud detection platform called Altreya and DeFi app xPortal acquired German AI startup Alphalink.
Coinbase, meanwhile, teamed up with Perplexity AI to allow traders access factual crypto data in real time. Predictions market platform Kalshi also partnered with Elon Musk’s xAI to generate AI summaries around topics trending on the prediction markets.