Ripple has raised $500 million at a $40 billion valuation, with backing from Wall Street players betting on the infrastructure underpinning digital assets.
The round was led by funds affiliated with Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities, alongside Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Brevan Howard and Marshall Wace, the crypto-focused financial technology company said in a statement Wednesday.
Ripple said the new capital will bolster its expansion into custody, stablecoins and prime brokerage services, areas drawing increased institutional interest as regulated digital asset rails continue to evolve. The company has processed more than $95 billion in transactions on its blockchain-based network, according to Ripple, which promotes its platform as a solution for cross-border payments. It’s US-dollar backed stablecoin RLUSD recently surpassed $1 billion in market value, making it the seventh-largest in the sector, according to data compiled by CoinMarketCap.com.
“Given the momentum, the overall industry is really opening up to and glomming onto stablecoin payments, which has been core to our strategy all along,” Ripple President Monica Long said during an interview at the firm’s Ripple Swell conference in New York. “So within that part of the business alone, we’ve doubled our customers quarter on quarter.”
Ripple’s aim is to be an infrastructure partner for institutions looking to access cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Interest from traditional financial institutions to enter the crypto sector has become more public since the dawn of the second Trump administration, which has scaled back regulation and embraced the crypto industry. President Donald Trump has already delivered major wins for the industry, including signing the first federal regulatory framework for stablecoins. Now, firms like Coinbase Global Inc. and Ripple are seizing the opportunity to present themselves as crypto-native partners for new entrants to the industry.
The firm is also working with WebBank, Mastercard and Gemini to explore the use of RLUSD on XRPL, a public blockchain designed for payments, to support stablecoin settlement of card transactions. The goal is to allow for blockchain-based settlement between Mastercard and WebBank, which issues the Gemini credit card.
Earlier this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission ended its case against Ripple, one of a series of several enforcement actions that have been abandoned during Trump’s second administration. Ripple was sued in 2020 by the SEC, which claimed the company was offering unregistered securities when it sold XRP tokens. Ripple Chief Executive Officer Brad Garlinghouse has been one of the crypto industry’s more prominent supports of the administration.
XRP, the native token of the XRP Ledger blockchain, has risen about 9% so far this year.