Texas wants a piece of Wall Street
With its long-teased stock exchange, TXSE, winning SEC approval in September, the state is taking aim at a market long ruled by just two giants.
After more than a year of buzz, the Lone Star State’s own stock exchange is finally starting to look real.
Last Friday, the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) — a Dallas-based challenger pitching itself as a “pro-business” alternative to Wall Street — announced an investment from JPMorgan, bringing its total funding above $250 million ahead of its planned 2026 launch. More than 70 investors have joined so far, including BlackRock, Charles Schwab, and Citadel Securities.
TXSE’s debut marks the first SEC-approved exchange in decades that will eventually be able to both list as well as trade public companies’ shares — potentially challenging the long-standing duopoly of the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
Since 2008, the two have been the only primary listing venues in the US, together accounting for virtually 100% of the country’s public equities — worth more than $67 trillion, per data from the World Federation of Exchanges. The tech-friendly Nasdaq, which controlled less than a third of that in 2000, now commands more than half (52%), powered by Big Tech’s relentless rally.
Texas’ plan is to spoil New York’s party, pledging to reduce “the burden of going and staying public,” likely meaning simpler, cheaper listing standards and fewer compliance hurdles than its rivals. The state has been doubling down on efforts to lure Corporate America, launching a new business court system last year to compete with the Chancery Court of Delaware, a state that houses most S&P 500 companies.
But TXSE won’t be ’lone in Texas: in February, the NYSE said it’s reincorporating its Chicago exchange into “NYSE Texas,” based in Dallas, while the Nasdaq announced plans to open a regional headquarters there in March.
