Trade with algorithms, connect with apps, and build services with our easy to use APIs.
Alpaca is a modern brokerage platform that provides access to the financial markets through developer-friendly APIs. By using Alpaca API, businesses build investing applications and features for their services. Also, programmatic traders can develop algorithms to automate trading strategies.
We are building a global de facto standard infrastructure for investing, which includes proprietary technology and regulatory setups, and in doing so, we will eventually serve everyone directly or indirectly through our partners, using Alpaca's infrastructure.
Our mission is to open financial services to everyone on the planet
Today, we offer global access to US stocks, options, and cryptocurrencies both in notional and fractional formats.
More than 150 businesses from 30 different countries such as Turkey, Indonesia, India, Saudi Arabia, the US, Japan, Thailand, and Australia have launched their investing applications in the last three years.
Furthermore, we are supported by a strong developer community of 25,000 monthly active developers (“MAD”). We are actively working on new product offerings such as global stocks and fixed income.
Alpaca has several entities that have attained international regulatory approvals.
In 2018, Alpaca Securities LLC (Alpaca Securities) became a registered US broker-dealer with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). (FINRA CRD#: 288202/SEC#: 8-69928).
Upon FINRA approval, Alpaca Securities became a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). SIPC protects customers against the loss of cash and securities. In 2023, we were thrilled to announce that we attained excess SIPC coverage. The excess coverage provides protection for any Alpaca Securities customer up to $30 million in securities and $1 million in cash and is covered at an aggregate limit of $150 million across all Alpaca Securities customer accounts.
After being approved by FINRA, we became classified as a Carrying Broker Dealer and Clearing Firm on a Fully-Disclosed and Omnibus basis. This allowed Alpaca Securities to clear and custody assets for our direct customers as well as other Broker-Dealers (US & International) and Registered Investment Advisors (US & International).
In 2023, Alpaca Securities was approved by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and in 2024 transitioned to fully self-clearing.
In 2022, Alpaca Crypto LLC (Alpaca Crypto) became a registered Money Services Business (MSB) with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) (NMLS # 2160858).
AlpacaX Crypto Ltd. (AlpacaX Crypto) and AlpacaX Securities Ltd. (AlpacaX Securities) are registered with the Securities Commission of the Bahamas. AlpacaX Crypto, as a Digital Asset Business (Registration number 208648 B), and AlpacaX Securities to conduct securities business (Registration number 208649 B).
AlpacaJapan Co., Ltd. (Alpaca Japan) has a securities license with the Japan Securities Dealers Association (JSDA) (Registration Number. 3024).
Alpaca initially started as a database and machine learning company in 2015, which built technology to run and process large sets of market data for prediction purposes primarily using various types of deep neural net models. For our machine learning business, our client base included enterprise financial institutions and trading companies.
During this time, we found that there were no database products designed for financial time-series data. We built a new database called MarketStore specifically designed and optimized for this type of data, and made it open source as it should be valuable for other traders and quants in the community.
We have been and will always be a technology company. We solve problems by building products and technology ourselves instead of relying on the legacy stack that other companies may purchase from outside vendors.
