Nasdaq, Inc.

What does Nasdaq, Inc. own?

The company owns the Nasdaq Stock Market and related U.S. exchanges, the Nasdaq Nordic and Baltic exchange groups, the Nasdaq index franchise, the Verafin and Adenza software businesses, and Nasdaq Private Market. It operates technology used by more than 130 external market operators.

Is Nasdaq publicly traded?

Yes. Nasdaq, Inc. trades on its own exchange under ticker NDAQ and is a member of the S&P 500. It demutualized from the National Association of Securities Dealers through share sales beginning in 2000.

Who founded Nasdaq?

The exchange was created by the National Association of Securities Dealers, the broker-dealer self-regulator, rather than individual founders. Gordon Macklin, NASD's president, is most associated with its 1971 launch.

Where is Nasdaq headquartered?

The company is headquartered at 151 West 42nd Street in New York City, the Times Square tower with the cylindrical Nasdaq video display. Trading infrastructure runs from data centers elsewhere.

How many brands does Nasdaq own?

It operates one master brand across roughly a dozen markets and business lines: the U.S. and European exchanges, Nasdaq Indexes, Verafin, Adenza, and Nasdaq Private Market.

Who owns Nasdaq?

Public shareholders own the company. Institutional investors including Vanguard and BlackRock hold the largest stakes. There is no controlling owner or government stake.

How does Nasdaq make money?

Revenue comes from trading and clearing fees (net of rebates), listings fees, index licensing, market data sales, and software subscriptions for anti-financial-crime and regulatory technology. Recurring software and subscription revenue now exceeds half the total.

The Nasdaq Stock Market opened on February 8, 1971, created by the National Association of Securities Dealers as the world's first electronic securities quotation system. The name was originally an acronym: National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations. Instead of a trading floor, it linked dealer quotations by computer and telephone for over-the-counter stocks.

The system became the preferred home for technology companies through the 1970s and 1980s, attracting Intel in 1971, Apple in 1980, and Microsoft in 1986. The dot-com boom made the Nasdaq Composite the era's defining index, peaking above 5,000 in March 2000 before losing nearly 80 percent of its value in the subsequent crash.

Nasdaq separated from NASD through share sales beginning in 2000, becoming a for-profit public company and later listing on its own exchange. Acquisition-driven expansion followed: the Philadelphia and Boston exchanges, electronic trading platform Inet in 2005, and the 2008 merger with Nordic exchange operator OMX valued at roughly $3.7 billion, creating NASDAQ OMX and its European exchange footprint.

The company renamed itself Nasdaq, Inc. in 2015 and spent the following decade pivoting to technology. It built index and data businesses, bought anti-financial-crime software provider Verafin for approximately $2.75 billion in 2021, and completed its largest deal in November 2023 with the roughly $10.5 billion acquisition of Adenza, a risk management and regulatory software company formed from Calypso and AxiomSL. A concurrent reorganization consolidated the business into three divisions: Market Services, Capital Access Platforms, and Financial Technology.

Fiscal 2025 delivered records across the business. Net revenue reached $5.249 billion, up 13 percent, with GAAP net income of $1.788 billion, diluted EPS of $3.09, and a record $1.2 trillion in listing transfers onto its exchanges. Solutions revenue surpassed $4 billion and ARR reached $3.05 billion, up 10 percent.

Nasdaq publishes annual ESG reporting as a listed company and operates corporate responsibility programs typical of a large financial technology firm. Its material footprint is data center energy consumption, and it reports emissions reduction progress in its filings. The company holds no B Corp certification.

Its most debated governance initiative was the 2021 board diversity listing rule, which required listed companies to disclose board diversity statistics or explain non-compliance. A federal appeals court struck the rule down in December 2024, ending the program after a multi-year legal battle that divided corporate and political opinion.

Nasdaq consistently appears in Fortune's Most Admired Companies and Forbes Global 2000 rankings, and its index and listings franchises collect annual recognition from ETF and exchange industry awards. The company reached record operational metrics in 2025, including the highest listing transfer total in its history at $1.2 trillion and record index product introductions.

The 2012 Facebook IPO failure remains the landmark operational controversy: system errors on the stock's debut caused order processing failures that cost market participants tens of millions and produced a $10 million SEC fine in 2013, then the largest penalty ever levied against an exchange.

The exchange has paid additional regulatory penalties, including a $5.7 million SEC settlement in 2021 over fee rebate violations and an $11 million settlement in 2015 over its handling of a Chinese company's listing. These are discrete resolved matters rather than ongoing actions.

Structural scrutiny continues over exchange economics: the SEC and Congress periodically examine exchange fees, market data pricing, and order-routing rebates, debates in which Nasdaq is a principal interested party. The diversity rule defeat in late 2024 closed a high-profile governance experiment.