Yoshi Yokokawa (Alpaca)
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Yoshi Yokokawa (Alpaca): Brokerage Infrastructure, UK Expansion & AI Agents
Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO and co-founder of Alpaca, describes the company as a US-headquartered clearing broker-dealer infrastructure serving hundreds of financial institutions like Kraken, covering stocks, options, fixed income, crypto and tokenization. He shares the founding story (started 2017, YC W19, driven by frustration that financial access in Japan lagged the US) and explains the Wealth Kernel acquisition anchoring the UK/EU expansion, arguing UK and European regulation is more structured and less politically volatile than in the US. Looking ahead, he sees two big trends shaping the roadmap: AI agents interacting with financial services through APIs rather than human UIs, and the slow migration of the $350 trillion custody market on-chain, with European market access launching on Alpaca's API.