Biography

Akshay Naheta is CEO of Bakkt Inc. (NYSE: BKKT) and a Member of the Board of Directors.

Prior to joining Bakkt in March 2025, he founded Distributed Technologies Research (DTR) in January 2023, a company building the next-generation financial infrastructure focused on programmable finance for businesses and consumers globally. DTR was acquired by Bakkt in January 2026.

From January 2017 to May 2022, Akshay served in various executive roles at SoftBank Group, most recently as Senior Vice President, Investments, where he directly reported to Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of SoftBank. He was instrumental in overseeing several of the firm’s most significant technology investments, including ARM, Auto1, and Nvidia.

In 2011, Akshay founded Knight Assets & Co., an investment management firm specializing in arbitrage and value-oriented strategies. He began his professional career at Deutsche Bank AG, where he served from 2005 to 2010, ultimately holding the position of Head of Principal Strategies. In this role, he was responsible for managing proprietary trading and structured transactions across multiple asset classes globally.

Akshay was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and was included in Fortune’s “40 Under 40” list of the most influential young leaders in business in 2020. He has also been honored with the Young Alumni Achievement Award by the University of Illinois.

He holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science (with highest honors) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.