Alpaca - About Us

A Leading Provider of Brokerage Infrastructure APIs

Alpaca is a brokerage platform providing access to financial markets through developer-friendly APIs.

Our Broker API is a full-stack, end to end brokerage infrastructure service empowering global fintechs and institutions to build customizable investing applications and platforms. Our Trading API allows programmatic traders, retail investors, hedge funds, and prop firms to develop algorithms that automate trading strategies across multiple asset types, including stocks, options, and crypto.

With both APIs, we are building a global de facto standard infrastructure for investing, which includes proprietary technology and regulatory setups, to achieve our mission of opening financial services to everyone on the planet.

Powering Hundreds of Financial Institutions Across 40+ Countries

Today, Alpaca is a global leader in brokerage infrastructure APIs providing access to stocks, ETFs, options, fixed income, and crypto. We also deliver embeddable finance solutions for tokenization, fully paid securities lending, high-yield cash, 24/5 trading, Shariah-compliant investing, and more.

Powering hundreds of global financial institutions and regional fintechs, we've helped our partners open over 7 million brokerage accounts across 40+ countries, including Australia, Chile, Denmark, France, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey, and more.

Furthermore, we are supported by a strong developer community of over 61,000 monthly active developers (“MAD”).

We are actively working on new product offerings such as global stocks, index options, and more.

Corresponding Self-Clearing Broker-Dealer in the US

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 2025, Alpaca Securities became a member of both the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) and Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC), as well as a Nasdaq Exchange Member, reinforcing its position as a full-stack brokerage infrastructure and FINRA-registered broker-dealer.

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).

Machine learning

Initially Started as a Database and Machine Learning Company

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.

Meet Alpaca's Co-Founders

Yoshi Yokokawa

Yoshi Yokokawa

Co-Founder & CEO

Yoshi has a financial services background and started his career in 2004 at Lehman Brothers' Securitization team. Afterwards, he day-traded full-time and co-founded a couple of software development businesses.

You can find his thought leadership on LinkedIn, the Fintech Underground podcast, and X. Yoshi was recently selected as an Endeavor Entrepreneur, joining one of the world's most prestigious communities of high-impact founders driving innovation, job creation, and inclusive economic growth.

Hitoshi Harada

Hitoshi Harada

Co-Founder & CPO

Hitoshi comes with a deep technology background and skillset. He was a Lead Architect at Silicon Valley's first parallel distributed database company, Greenplum (later acquired by EMC).

Prior to this, he started his career in 2002 by building Japan's biggest online travel agencies' data infrastructures. He is a frequent open-source contributor and is known for his Window Functions feature on PostgreSQL and is on Github, LinkedIn, and X.

Alpaca

Alpaca is headquartered in California, USA, and is a globally fully remote distributed company with more than 250 employees in 25 countries.

Alpaca is led by an executive team that brings diverse experience from tech companies and financial institutions like Upvest, Wise, Robinhood, Strike, TD Securities, TMX Group, and more.

Institutional Backing for Scalable, Global Growth

As of our recent Series C, we've raised over $170 million from top-tier investors.

Portage
Spark Capital
Tribe Capital
Social Leverage
Derayah
Horizons Ventures
Unbound
SBI Group
Elefund
Y Combinator
Alpaca Team

We Love Our Company Name Alpaca!

We named ourselves Alpaca because we felt alpacas are approachable, lively, memorable, cute, and funny.

When Yoshi and Hitoshi were brainstorming a company name, they wanted to come up with something that is warm, lively, and exists in true nature like animals or fruits. They felt that both database and financial services, where Alpaca is situated, only evoked a cold, machine-like and number-oriented environment.

During this search for either animal or fruit-based names, they happened to be driving around Woodside in Silicon Valley to see what Masa Son's US$100 million house looked like. Although Masa's house was under construction, they happened to see tens of alpacas as pets in the yard of the gorgeous land right nextdoor.

After observing these alpacas cautiously and looking at them, Yoshi and Hitoshi made up their mind to name the company after them. They felt that alpacas symbolize success, considering many wealthy owners choose to have them as pets in California, especially being so far away from their native origin of South America. Finally, the word “alpaca” starts with the first alphabet character of both English (“a”) and Japanese (“あ”) and has the sound of “p” This sound also is a hit in consumer brands like Japanese snacks of Pocky and Toppo.

We love the company name Alpaca, and all of us here continue to do our best to stay true to the feeling alpacas carry out.

Find Out More About Alpaca

Discover our latest product updates, company news, and explore career opportunities with us.

Blog

Stay informed with our latest product updates and company news.

Learn More

We're Hiring

Join the Alpaca team and be part of shaping the future of finance.

Learn More