Brokerage infrastructure company Alpaca closed a $135 million Series C+ round led by Peak XV Partners on July 16, 2026 — a sign that AI agents are no longer just a feature of personal finance apps but the primary driver of trading volume. For anyone building or using an AI financial advisor, this funding round signals the maturing of the underlying rails that make automated financial guidance possible.
What Happened
Alpaca, a New York-based brokerage API provider, raised $135 million in new equity alongside $300 million in debt financing — bringing total new capital to $435 million. Peak XV Partners led the equity round, with Opera Tech Ventures (BNP Paribas’s venture arm) and Unbound also participating. According to the official Alpaca announcement, monthly active API users have grown nearly 4x in the six months leading up to mid-2026 — and Alpaca attributes most of that growth to AI agents being plugged directly into its trading infrastructure. Revenue has doubled year-over-year for three consecutive years, and the company now holds over $1.5 billion in assets under custody for tokenized equities.
Why It Matters for AI-Driven Finance
The Alpaca raise is not just a fintech funding story — it is a data point about the direction of AI in financial services. Alpaca’s platform enables fintechs, banks, wealth managers, and broker-dealers to build investing products via API, covering both traditional and tokenized markets. CEO Yoshi Yokokawa described the company’s ambition plainly: “Alpaca is uniquely positioned to become the default infrastructure layer for tokenized global capital markets and AI-native financial services.” The 4x user growth driven by AI agents shows that autonomous financial tools are already generating real trading activity, not just offering advice. As AI advisors become capable of executing trades and rebalancing portfolios without human intervention, the demand for reliable, programmable brokerage infrastructure will only accelerate.