Yoshi Yokokawa

Yoshi Yokokawa is CEO and Co-Founder of Alpaca, a US-headquartered self-clearing broker-dealer that provides brokerage infrastructure APIs covering stocks, ETFs, options, fixed income, and crypto. He has held this role since August 2017. Alpaca participated in Y Combinator's W19 cohort, where the absence of a broker-dealer API was identified as a clear market gap. The company has raised $150 million, surpassed a $1 billion valuation, and counts Kraken and Citadel among its strategic investor-customers. Yokokawa's stated thesis at founding was that algorithms and AI agents would become the primary interface for financial services, positioning Alpaca ahead of the mobile-first era. In September 2025, he received the Endeavor Entrepreneur Award.

Prior to Alpaca, Yokokawa co-founded Ikkyo Technology in Kobe, Japan in February 2013, where the company built deep-learning AI for image recognition and capital markets, working with financial institutions globally. Before that, he operated as a proprietary forex day trader from August 2010 to February 2013. Earlier, he worked at Nomura as VP of Structured Finance Alternative Products from September 2008 to July 2010, having joined with his team following Nomura's acquisition of Lehman Brothers' Asian and European operations. At Nomura, he was responsible for business development in index-linked products in Japan and the distribution and syndication of US and European securitised products in Asia. His total professional experience spans approximately 22 years.