Citadel Securities
Privately held market maker providing liquidity in equity and fixed income products to retail and institutional clients. It raised 1.15 billion dollars from Sequoia Capital and Paradigm in January 2022 at a valuation of about 22 billion dollars.
Industry: Market making | Location: Miami, United States | Founded: 2001 | Total Funding: USD 1.2B
About Citadel Securities
Citadel Securities is a United States market maker that provides liquidity in equity and fixed income products to retail and institutional clients. When it announced outside funding in January 2022, it said it served more than 1,600 institutional clients, including sovereign wealth funds and central banks, and operated in more than 50 countries from 12 offices. Trade press described it as the largest market maker on the New York Stock Exchange.
Kenneth Griffin founded the firm, and reports give the year as 2001 or 2002. Griffin also owns the separate hedge fund Citadel LLC. Peng Zhao joined Citadel Securities in 2006 as a quantitative researcher and became chief executive in January 2017; he was quoted as chief executive in the 2022 funding announcement. Fortune quoted Jim Esposito as the firm's president in November 2025.
In January 2022 Citadel Securities received a minority investment of 1.15 billion dollars from Sequoia Capital and Paradigm, its first external funding round, at a valuation of about 22 billion dollars. Sequoia led the round through three of its funds, and its partner Alfred Lin joined the board. The firm said it planned to extend its technology into more markets and asset classes, including crypto.
In April 2025 Citadel Securities led a 25 million dollar Series B round in TransFICC, a connectivity provider for fixed income trading. In November 2025 Fortune reported that Kraken had raised 200 million dollars from Citadel Securities at a 20 billion dollar valuation, and that the two firms would work together on risk management and market structure analysis. Ripple said it raised 500 million dollars from Citadel Securities, Fortress Investment Group and other investors that month.
Citadel Securities remains privately held, and the sources reviewed give no recent revenue or net income figure for it. A TechScoop article of 29 July 2026 reported that Epic Markets, a retail brokerage startup, was founded by two former Citadel Securities executives, including Kevin Kimmel, who spent more than a decade at the firm and was its global head of eFX.
Leadership
- Kenneth C. Griffin, Founder
- Peng Zhao, Chief Executive Officer
- Jim Esposito, President
- Alfred Lin, Board member (Sequoia Capital partner)