smartTrade Buys Celoxica to Push Into Listed-Market Execution
Trading-software provider smartTrade Technologies has acquired execution infrastructure provider Celoxica for an undisclosed amount, extending its coverage from OTC trading into systems used to access venues and execute orders.
The acquisition follows smartTrade's purchase of kACE Financial, an FX and rates derivatives pricing and analytics specialist formerly known as Fenics, which it agreed to buy from BGC Group in December 2025 and completed in January. That transaction was valued at as much as $119 million.
This M&A strategy aligns with solid financial momentum at smartTrade's regional hubs.
Building a Complete Trading Stack
smartTrade builds electronic trading and payments software, with products focused on workflow orchestration, pricing and distribution across FX, FX derivatives and payments. Celoxica provides hardware-accelerated execution infrastructure across more than 80 venues worldwide, serving banks, prime brokers, hedge funds, quantitative trading firms and algorithmic-trading desks.
The two companies occupy complementary parts of the front-office technology stack: smartTrade at workflow, pricing and distribution; Celoxica at market access, execution and in-line pre-trade risk. Celoxica's FPGA-based systems are designed for nanosecond-level execution, while its software-based systems operate at single-digit microsecond latency.
We are convinced that, together, we offer our clients something much more valuable than either of us could offer alone.
Cross-Selling the Ecosystem
The deal is intended to open Celoxica's technology to smartTrade's more than 250 clients. Celoxica clients, meanwhile, may gain access to smartTrade's multi-asset trading and payments tools, including connectivity, aggregation, distribution, order management, analytics and AI capabilities.
Jean-Marc Bouhelier, Celoxica's general manager, will continue to lead the business and join smartTrade's executive committee. The companies said Celoxica's client relationships, contracts, support and day-to-day service will remain unchanged.
The acquisition follows a similar move by futures-focused Trading Technologies, which acquired equities and equity-options routing specialist TRAFiX in September to broaden its multi-asset platform. Both transactions reflect vendors' efforts to offer institutions a wider range of trading functions through a single provider, reducing their reliance on separate systems for pricing, workflow and execution.
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