Kraken Parent Payward and Clients Buy AAVE Tokens on Open Market

Payward, the parent company of the Kraken exchange, and its clients have bought AAVE tokens on the secondary market. The purchases were announced on Nov. 5 at 9:00 a.m. ET. The amount of tokens and the dollar value were not disclosed.

Details

The buying went through an affiliated fund, Digital Asset Special Investments I, LP, and clients of Payward's asset management business, CoinDesk reports. Gurpreet Oberoi, VP of Payward asset management, said the investment reflects "long-term conviction in onchain credit markets and DeFi," along with growing client demand for exposure to that infrastructure. Aave Labs founder and CEO Stani Kulechov called working with Payward "a strategic step" toward the next wave of retail and institutional users. The two companies are exploring further collaboration, and Payward may keep adding to its position, according to Cryptobriefing.

The deal is much smaller in scope than what was discussed in June. Reports then described talks over a 15% stake in Aave Group at a $385 million valuation plus 250,000 AAVE tokens, and Kulechov publicly pushed back on the idea of selling "at a 70% discount." This time it is tokens only, with no equity, and they were bought from the market rather than from Aave itself.

Payward has been building out its DeFi business: it launched the DeFi Earn product in January 2026 and deployed a dedicated Aave instance on its Ink layer-2 network.

What this means for the market

For Aave, it is a public vote of interest from one of the industry's large players. Without a disclosed size, though, the effect on the AAVE price cannot be judged, and the sources report no market reaction. See the live price on the AAVE page and the wider market picture in the daily brief.

Not investment advice.