NinjaTrader, LLC / NinjaTrader Group, LLC is a Chicago-based financial technology and brokerage company founded in 2003 by Raymond Deux. Its headquarters are at 222 North LaSalle Street, Chicago. It operated as a private company majority-backed by Long Ridge Equity Partners (with DRW Venture Capital and Capital Southwest among investors) until Kraken agreed to acquire it for $1.5 billion in March 2025; the deal, reported as the largest-ever combination of traditional finance and crypto, closed May 1, 2025, and NinjaTrader operates as a standalone platform under Kraken's parent, Payward. Trade-press M&A coverage put headcount at roughly 400 employees. NinjaTrader has also used the name NinjaTrader Group, LLC as its parent entity.
Operations. NinjaTrader develops and sells retail futures and forex trading software and related brokerage services. Its core product is the NinjaTrader trading platform — desktop, web and mobile — offering advanced charting, market analytics, strategy backtesting, automated strategy development and trade simulation. On the brokerage side, it operates NinjaTrader Brokerage, an NFA-registered introducing broker, and NinjaTrader Clearing, LLC, a CFTC-registered Futures Commission Merchant providing clearing. It acquired Tradovate, a cloud-based futures platform, and serves a community of roughly two million registered traders.
Litigation posture. This is an operating company, not a patent assertion entity: of three tracked appearances, two are as plaintiff and one as defendant, and the plaintiff-side matters are defensive patent challenges rather than infringement claims. In February 2016 NinjaTrader, alongside Interactive Brokers, filed America Invents Act review petitions at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against Chart Trading Development, LLC — the same entity that had sued NinjaTrader.
Notable case. The district court matter, Chart Trading Development, LLC v. NinjaTrader Group, LLC et al., was filed December 3, 2015 in the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division — a venue historically favored by patent plaintiffs — and the parallel PTAB filings indicate a coordinated defense by operating brokers against a chart-trading patent holder.