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Wintermute’s $1B AI bet
Crypto market maker Wintermute plans to invest about $1 billion over five years in high-frequency trading and artificial intelligence data-center infrastructure as it expands beyond crypto into stocks, commodities and foreign exchange.
“wants non-crypto markets to generate more than 50% of revenue by the end of 2027”
Bloomberg, as cited by CoinDesk, says the London-based firm wants non-crypto markets to generate more than 50% of revenue by the end of 2027, up from 10% currently, and expects to fund the spending with retained earnings.
PYMNTS, citing Bloomberg, frames the move as a diversification effort as the price of cryptocurrency slumps, with founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy telling Bloomberg that competing in traditional markets requires significant investment.
In the same Bloomberg interview, Gaevoy said, “We are now going up against firms that have spent decades optimizing their technology and infrastructure for these markets, so obviously the level of investment required is significant,” and he added that competing means “going beyond shaving microseconds off execution.”
From crypto to tradfi
Multiple outlets tie Wintermute’s buildout to a shift in how it operates, with Bloomberg reporting that the firm aims to become a full-service dealer across equities, commodities and foreign exchange.
Bloomingbit says Wintermute completed broker-dealer registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, allowing it to trade stocks and equity options and provide liquidity on exchanges and in over-the-counter markets.
ForkLog adds that the firm will fund the AI and HFT expenses from retained earnings, and it says non-crypto activities account for about 10% of the market maker’s revenue while Wintermute aims for more than 50% by the end of 2027.
In the same Bloomberg reporting, CoinDesk says Wintermute’s average daily trading volume fell to about $10 billion this year from $15 billion in 2025, while bitcoin declined to roughly half its October peak above $126,000.
AI infrastructure and competition
CoinDesk reports that Wintermute will use the planned infrastructure to train quantitative models on large volumes of market data and increase its computing, storage and networking capacity, while Gaevoy argues that traditional-market competition requires more than reducing execution times by microseconds.
“Wintermute will use the infrastructure to train quantitative models on large volumes of market data”
The same CoinDesk account says Wintermute 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, and it also opened a prediction-markets desk in early 2026.
In a separate Bloomberg-related framing, Mitrade says Wintermute’s $1 billion bet signals ambition to diversify services across equities, commodities and foreign exchange and bring the firm into direct competition with firms such as Jane Street Group and Citadel Securities.
Meanwhile, CoinDesk notes that XTX trades more than $250 billion a day and announced plans last year to spend €1 billion, or about $1.15 billion, on five data centers in Finland, underscoring the scale of the infrastructure race Wintermute is joining.
