BlockBeats News, August 12, according to Bloomberg, cryptocurrency market maker Wintermute plans to invest around $1 billion over the next 5 years in high-frequency trading and AI data center infrastructure, and expand to traditional financial markets such as stocks, commodities, and forex. Wintermute's founder and CEO, Evgeny Gaevoy, stated that the company aims to gradually transform into a comprehensive trading firm similar to Jane Street or Citadel Securities.

Gaevoy mentioned that competing with institutions that have optimized technology and infrastructure in traditional markets for decades requires significant investment. In addition to reducing trade execution latency, Wintermute also needs to continuously leverage vast market data to train and retrain more complex quantitative models, and obtain sufficient computing, storage, and networking resources. The aforementioned infrastructure investment is expected to be primarily funded by the company's retained earnings.

Impacted by the downturn in the cryptocurrency market, Wintermute's average daily trading volume has decreased from around $15 billion last year to $10 billion this year. Currently, about 10% of the company's revenue comes from non-crypto markets, with the goal of increasing this proportion to over 50% by the end of 2027. The company has started trading ETFs, perpetual contracts linked to real-world assets, and plans to launch a prediction market trading business in early 2026.

Last week, Wintermute announced that its U.S. subsidiary has registered as a broker-dealer, allowing it to trade stocks, stock options, and act as an exchange-traded product authorized participant. The company currently has 17 employees in New York and plans to double the local headcount next year, while expecting a 40% increase in global staff.