Laqus, a Brazilian fintech that runs market infrastructure for fixed-income securities, agreed to buy Estar.finance, a platform for trading tokenized assets and debt securities, from the holding company SMU. Laqus announced the deal on February 9, 2026.
The companies did not disclose the price or other financial terms. The transaction still requires the usual regulatory approvals, and neither side gave a timetable for closing.
Estar will keep operating normally while the regulatory transfer is completed and during the final phase of the sandbox run by the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM), Brazil's securities regulator, according to SMU.
What Estar built
Estar launched in 2022 as a project of SMU, one of Brazil's first investment crowdfunding platforms. It was designed to operate as an organized over-the-counter market inside the CVM's regulatory sandbox, a programme that lets companies test new financial products under relaxed rules and with set limits on activity.
Startups.com.br reported that Estar was the first regulated platform the CVM authorized to trade tokenized assets. Laqus said Estar was also the only sandbox participant to use the full transaction limits the regulator had granted it.
According to Finsiders Brasil, Estar's trading technology was developed by Nasdaq and licensed in Brazil by Átris, part of the Digitra.com group, an exchange founded by Rodrigo Batista, who previously worked at Mercado Bitcoin. Neither report gave figures for Estar's trading volume, headcount or outside funding.
“A agenda de crédito privado, tokenização e crowdfunding exige uma infraestrutura mais sofisticada e interoperável. Queremos ser a camada que viabiliza esse crescimento com segurança e liquidez — o que não significa, necessariamente, que a Laqus precise ser o local onde todas as negociações acontecem.”
Why Laqus is buying
Laqus was founded in 2010 under the name Mark 2 Market and has positioned itself as an alternative to B3, the Brazilian exchange operator. It provides deposit, bookkeeping and custody services for securities and acts as regulated infrastructure for crowdfunding offerings made under CVM Resolution 88. Finsiders reported that it holds about R$50 billion (roughly $9 billion) in deposited assets.
The company said the acquisition supports its aim of becoming a leading player in Brazil's secondary market, in particular for private credit, crowdfunding and tokenized assets. Laqus wants a prominent position in the market for Resolution 88 offerings. Resolution 88 is the CVM rule that governs investment crowdfunding in Brazil, and it was being revised after months of public consultation, according to Finsiders.
Chief executive Rodrigo Amato said adding Estar would widen Laqus's scope and let it sell a more integrated package to support the growth of private debt, digital structures and tokenized assets. He said Laqus wanted to be the layer that makes that growth possible with security and liquidity, but that this did not mean all trades had to happen on Laqus itself.
The seller and the investors
Rodrigo Carneiro, a director of SMU, said the sale ended a successful cycle for Estar in the CVM sandbox. With Laqus's institutional and technical backing, he said, the platform could become part of a more integrated infrastructure for Brazil's capital markets.
Laqus itself is venture-backed. Startups.com.br reported that the investment firm KPTL put R$10.8 million (about $2 million) into the company in 2021, when it still operated as Mark 2 Market. No investors in Estar were named in the reports.
A wider race into digital assets
Startups.com.br placed the deal in the context of rapid growth in private credit, tokenization and crowdfunding in Brazil, with companies such as Kria, Captable and Mercado Bitcoin moving into digital assets and secondary trading.
Large market operators abroad have taken similar steps. The publication pointed to Deutsche Börse's purchase of Crypto Finance AG and the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation's acquisition of Securrency as examples of established infrastructure providers buying their way into tokenized markets.
Laqus has continued to buy since the Estar agreement. In May 2026 it announced the purchase of goLiza, a fintech that digitises and automates registration processes for investment funds, paying in cash and shares. Startups.com.br described it as the company's second acquisition of the year, after Estar.
