It isn’t just a story about disrupting capital markets in 2025, Jane Street, the market maker and liquidity provider, has been growing its disruptive strategy for several years now.
Jane Street is proud of how technology is central to everything it does. The company builds almost all its software in-house, including its trading and risk management systems. Additionally, the company is known for its expertise in domestic and international ETFs. Today the company is a major player in the equities, bonds, and options markets, as well as others.
Just last week Reuters reported how China has been looking at allowing Western firms such as Citadel Securities and Jane Street to act as market makers in its ETF sector.
This latest news comes on the back of the potential growth of the Hong Kong office of Jane Street. The company is a registered market maker on the HKEX and has been trading yuan-denominated shares in Hong Kong since 2023.
How Did Jane Street Grow So Big?
The firm was only established in 2000. Since then it has grown to over 2,600 employees across five offices – Amsterdam, Singapore, New York, London, and Hong Kong. Much of the success of Jane Street has been generated in its local market. Last year Bloomberg reported how Jane Street accounted for 10.4% of equities market activity in North America in 2023. With ETFs the firm accounted for some 24 percent of primary market activity in U.S.-listed vehicles.
In the first nine months of 2024 Jane Street earned $14.2 billion, surpassing the full 2023 earnings of $10 billion. However, the firm doesn’t seem to be stopping its growth plans any time soon.
Jane Street is known for being secretive about its assets and revenues. Other firms in the same sector may seek visibility; Jane Street is different. The company’s expansion, like all other things, has been a ‘silent expansion.’
From ETFs to Top Liquidity Provider
The firm’s growth trajectory over the past decade has been staggering. Once confined to niche strategies in ETFs, Jane Street now ranks among the top liquidity providers across multiple asset classes, from fixed income to FX. It is widely regarded as one of the most dominant players in U.S. and European options markets and has grown its presence in Asia.
In 2025, Jane Street’s algorithms are more than just trading tools, they are also essential to keeping entire markets functioning efficiently. Also this year, electronic market makers like Jane Street are poised to claim a larger share of the $150 billion global-markets revenue pool.
A New Kind of Market Maker
Jane Street’s true disruption lies not in innovation at the surface level, but in rewiring the market infrastructure itself. As exchanges fragment, settlement windows compress, and regulators demand real-time transparency, Jane Street’s tech stack has become indispensable.
Through deep integration with exchanges and counterparties, the firm provides seamless algorithmic execution and instant pricing across a host of illiquid or volatile instruments. While banks lag behind in updating core infrastructure, much like D.E. Shaw, Jane Street sets the pace.
Talent, Tech, and Total Focus
Attracting world-class quants, technologists, and economists, Jane Street’s internal culture is more akin to a research university than a Wall Street firm. In a way it is how D.E. Shaw has focussed on tech in recent years. In 2025, Jane Street continues to poach top-tier talent from both academia and Silicon Valley, all while avoiding the distractions of media, or hype cycles. eFinancialCareers has given some commentary on a recent FT story about Jane Street. The story exposes some significant organizational habits that seem more akin to a decentralized autonomous organization than an average Wall Street firm.
What Comes Next?
As clearing, tokenization, and AI-based execution reshape the global financial infrastructue, Jane Street is well-positioned to expand deeper into the capital markets value chain. Rumours abound of the firm building its own settlement layer or even launching private market infrastructure for institutional investors. Perhaps using blockchain?
In an age where visibility often equals power, Jane Street is the exception. The firm’s power lies in ubiquity, precision, and silence.
Author: Andy Samu
#JaneStreet #CapitalMarkets #ETF #Trading #MarketMakers #Disruption
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