Clear Street
Unicorn · $1.7BNew York, US · 9 known investors
Clear Street is an investment banking platform providing advisory and capital markets services, including equity and debt offerings, M&A, and corporate access, primarily for growth-stage technology, fintech, blockchain, and energy transition companies.
Also known as Clear Street LLC
Founders & leadership
Investors · 9
Also in the syndicate · 7
Valuation · disclosed
Disclosed eventsSource: SEC prospectus filings, and round valuations the company or its investors disclosed — follow each entry's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Clear Street is a financial infrastructure technology firm and broker-dealer that operates a cloud-native, API-based capital markets platform covering the trading lifecycle from execution through clearing, settlement, custody, financing and leverage on a single real-time ledger. Its stated mission is to give sophisticated investors access to every asset in every market. Service lines include clearing, financing, execution and trading, investment banking, and active-trader services, with asset class coverage spanning U.S. equities, options, fixed income, futures, swaps, U.S. Treasury repo and MBS repo, and, from 2026, digital assets.
The firm positions its technology against legacy capital markets systems, which it characterizes as infrastructure originally built in the 1970s and extended over time with layered technology such as COBOL mainframes. Its Clear Street Studio product bundles a financing portal, portfolio management system, risk management system and an in-house execution management system, delivered as web or desktop applications and also exposed through REST and WebSocket APIs. Clear Street reports roughly 6,000 production releases per year across more than 300 services, 2,500-plus container instances and 400-plus hosts. In May 2026 it launched a consumer-facing trading platform for sophisticated individual investors on iOS, Android and web, running on the same institutional infrastructure and paired with an in-house AI research engine called Omni AI, plus a Model Context Protocol server allowing third-party AI assistants to connect.
Operating entity Clear Street LLC is a FINRA and SIPC member broker-dealer and a Futures Commission Merchant registered with the CFTC and a member of NFA. The company also runs an investment banking business, an equity research group, and Clear Street UK and Europe.
Founding story
Clear Street was founded in 2018 to replace outdated technology infrastructure used across capital markets, motivated by pain points its founders experienced firsthand. Co-founder Chris Pento, who served as Chief Executive Officer at the time of the 2022 Series B, said clients should not need six months to open an account or a year to begin trading a new asset class. Co-founder and then Chief Technology Officer Sachin Kumar said the firm started with prime brokerage because that is where the founders had experienced the frustrations of legacy technology directly. A 2026 company release describes Clear Street as founded in 2018 by Uri Cohen to address structural pain points he experienced as a trader and professional investor; Cohen is identified as Co-Founder and Executive Chairman in that release and as Chief Executive Officer on the company's about page.
Business model
Clear Street sells brokerage and market infrastructure services to institutions and, more recently, to individual traders: prime brokerage and clearing, securities financing, execution and outsourced trading, futures clearing, market making services, and investment banking. Its Studio platform is described as offered in a cost-neutral model to clients, with access via web, desktop and APIs.
Revenue derives from brokerage and capital markets activity — clearing, settlement and custody, financing of client balances, execution and trading, and investment banking mandates. The company reports approximately $19.4 billion in average interest-bearing client balances, indicating a balance-based financing/interest component alongside transaction-based fees.
Traction
Company-reported figures include 800+ employees worldwide, approximately 550 million shares and about $28.4 billion notional traded per day, 94% year-over-year transacted growth, approximately $16 billion in customer balances, around 700 institutional clients and $1.0 billion in capital raised. Its May 2026 release reports more than 900 clients, about $19.4 billion average interest-bearing client balances, $33.6 billion average daily U.S. equities trading volume, roughly 3.4% U.S. equity market share, 57 exchange and clearing memberships, and reach to more than 40 million end users through institutional clients. At the time of the 2022 Series B the platform processed more than $3 billion in daily trading volume, following a 220% increase in financing balances and 510% growth in equity transactional volume since the start of 2021.
Latest developments
In May 2026 Clear Street launched a trading platform for sophisticated individual investors on iOS, Android and web, including the in-house Omni AI research engine, a REST API with multi-language SDKs and a Model Context Protocol server, with an initial rollout to the first 10,000 traders and plans to add futures, fixed income, prediction markets and digital assets through the remainder of 2026. Earlier in 2026 the company launched institutional digital asset trading (March) and acquired Boom Securities to enter Asia-Pacific (February). In August 2026 it announced electronic execution across Europe and Asia-Pacific, migration of Clear Street Canada's clearing and execution onto its proprietary cloud-native platform, and a partnership with STS Digital to expand institutional digital asset derivatives.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
Clear Street reports accounting for roughly 3.4% of U.S. equity market share (its Studio page cites about 4% of U.S. equities notional volume), more than 900 institutional clients, and 57 exchange and clearing memberships globally, positioning it as a technology-led challenger to incumbent prime brokers and clearing firms. Cited comparable firms include TD Cowen, BTIG and South Street Securities Holdings.
The company attributes its differentiation to architecture: one proprietary, real-time single-ledger stack spanning execution, clearing, settlement, custody, risk and financing, rather than multiple stitched-together legacy systems. Management has said 80-90% of the infrastructure used to service prime brokerage clients is the same as that used by other market participants, enabling reuse of API-first clearing, settlement and custody across segments, and cites faster account opening and asset-class onboarding than incumbents.
Technology
A single, real-time, cloud-native ledger and multi-asset clearing system holding information in one platform, described as API-first, horizontally scalable and AI-enhanced. Studio provides risk and margin, exposure, P&L and analytic reporting with intraday transparency into the same data used by the internal risk team. The retail platform adds direct exchange order routing, Level 2 depth-of-book data, execution quality reporting, algorithmic order types (TWAP, VWAP, DMA) with pre-trade risk controls, multi-language SDKs, and the Omni AI engine that synthesizes earnings data, filings, analyst consensus and news, models position sizing and portfolio impact, and assembles structured positions including options overlays and hedges.
Go-to-market
Direct institutional sales, reorganized in October 2025 under a global platform sales function, supported by senior hires from established banks and brokers. The firm publishes whitepapers and research, runs an Innovator Insight Series and conference programming, partners with capital-introduction networks such as iConnections, and in 2026 added a self-service consumer channel with an initial rollout capped at the first 10,000 traders.
Hedge funds, asset managers (traditional and alternative), proprietary trading firms and market makers, broker-dealers, ETF issuers, family offices, corporate issuers, and sophisticated individual and active traders. The 2026 retail platform is open to U.S.-based individual investors.
Geography
Headquartered in New York with offices globally. Clear Street launched in the United Kingdom in December 2024 following FCA approval and joined the London Metal Exchange, established a UK and Europe leadership structure, expanded into Asia-Pacific in February 2026 via the acquisition of Boom Securities, operates a Canadian business, and in August 2026 launched electronic execution across Europe and Asia-Pacific. Exchange and clearing connectivity spans North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, with additional Latin American, African, Middle Eastern and Asia-Pacific venues listed as coming soon.
History
Clear Street was founded in September 2018 and began operating a clearing broker-dealer in December 2018. It entered prime brokerage in January 2019, onboarded its first prime brokerage client in July 2019 and processed its first U.S. equities trade in August 2019. It acquired professional trading platform CenterPoint Securities in July 2020, raised over $300 million in 2021, added U.S. options in September 2021, launched ATLAS in November 2022, and raised a $165 million Series B in May 2022. In 2023 it began offering investment banking, acquired the REACT futures clearing platform, added fixed income, and extended the Series B by $520 million. Subsequent milestones include corporate access (January 2024), market maker and futures clearing services (April 2024), the Fox River algorithmic trading acquisition (October 2024), the UK launch (December 2024), 24/6 trading and OCC cross-margin capabilities (March 2025), overnight trading via MOON ATS and OTC Overnight (April 2025), outsourced trading (May 2025), Bruce ATS integration and global platform sales (October 2025), a BitGo partnership (November 2025), an iConnections partnership (December 2025), the Boom Securities acquisition (February 2026), digital asset trading (March 2026) and the individual trader app (May 2026).
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Competitors · 3
by search overlap
Companies competing with Clear Street for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 31
launches, deals, and filingsLaunch of an equities and options trading platform for sophisticated individual investors on iOS, Android and web, built on Clear Street's institutional infrastructure and including the in-house Omni AI research engine; initial rollout open to the first 10,000 traders, with futures, fixed income, prediction markets and digital assets planned later in 2026.
Alex Lawton is listed as Chief Executive Officer, Clear Street UK and Europe.
Clear Street received Financial Conduct Authority approval to launch UK operations and joined the London Metal Exchange.
Clear Street enters prime brokerage, servicing its first prime brokerage client in July 2019.
Clear Street is founded; begins operating a clearing broker-dealer in December 2018.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Clear Streetclearstreet.io · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Clear Street do?
- Clear Street is a New York-based financial infrastructure firm offering cloud-native clearing, financing, execution and prime brokerage.
- Who founded Clear Street?
- Clear Street was founded by Chris Pento.
- Who are Clear Street's investors?
- Clear Street's investors include NextGen Venture Partners, Season Two Ventures.
- Where is Clear Street headquartered?
- Clear Street is headquartered in New York, US.