Kraken owner Payward buys undisclosed amount of AAVE tokens, report says

Tokens only, no equity stake

The announcement didn't come with a price tag. No dollar figure or token count was attached to it, and Crypto Briefing noted that the undisclosed amount makes it impossible to judge the purchase's scale. The outlet reported the announcement was dated November 5, 2026 (citing unspecified research findings).

It's a token deal, nothing more.

Payward isn't taking equity in the company that develops Aave, according to Crypto Briefing's report. The fund's asset management clients also took part in the purchase.

The June deal that fell through

That's a clear departure from the talks disclosed in June 2026, which centered on a much larger package. Per Crypto Briefing, that proposal included 250,000 AAVE tokens and a 15% equity stake in Aave Group at a $385 million valuation. The arrangement wasn't completed.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov publicly disputed claims that the June offering undervalued the AAVE token, the publication reported. So the new buy is narrower: tokens only, routed through a fund, with clients participating alongside Payward.

Kraken's growing defi footprint

The purchase extends Payward's push into asset management and decentralized finance. Crypto Briefing described a company trying to grow beyond running an exchange and into managing assets, with defi as a central piece of that plan.

Kraken has been building in that direction through 2026. It launched its DeFi Earn product in January 2026, according to research findings cited by the publication, and it also deployed a white-label instance of the Aave protocol on Ink, its Layer-2 network, this year. That deployment had already tied Kraken's own infrastructure to the Aave protocol before this token purchase.

Payward and Aave are exploring further collaboration, per the report. Until a dollar figure or token count surfaces, though, the scale of this buy can't be judged from the outside.