Kraken compresses M&A due diligence from weeks to 24 hours with AI

Kraken needed to conduct due diligence on its major acquisition of retail trading startup NinjaTrader. Normally a six-person internal team would handle this, reviewing finances, legal issues, and operations over 'a period of weeks through painstaking effort,' according to Robert Moore, Kraken's VP of strategy and corporate development.

Kraken brought in Termina, an AI-powered due diligence platform, to crunch NinjaTrader's data, including company financials, operating ledgers, and loan types. Termina checked for discrepancies between the deal prospectus and underlying raw data, validated the acquisition's business thesis, and flagged risks, with senior analysts verifying all outputs before delivery.

Termina generated a full due diligence report within 24 hours, comparable to what a consultant might produce, and Kraken's team ran at least 10 follow-up 'cuts' of analysis over a few weeks, each saving days to weeks of work. The analysis validated NinjaTrader's growth, share-of-wallet gains, and customer retention, giving Kraken confidence in the deal thesis without surfacing major surprises.

• AI compressed due diligence work that normally takes weeks into a 24-hour turnaround for the initial report.
• Termina became a recurring part of Kraken's M&A process, described by Moore as 'almost like an outsourced piece of my core team,' used across NinjaTrader and other nonpublic acquisitions.
• Exact cost savings were hard to quantify since the work would otherwise have been done in-house, but the tool let Kraken's team vet more prospective deals and move faster under tight timelines.