Ripple Valued at $40B in Funding Round

Ripple has raised $500 million in a new strategic investment round led by Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities, valuing the crypto firm at $40 billion. Other participants include Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Brevan Howard and Marshall Wace.

“This investment reflects both Ripple’s incredible momentum, and further validation of the market opportunities we are aggressively pursuing from some of the world’s most trusted financial institutions,” said Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse. “We started in 2012 with a use case – payments – and we have expanded that success in custody, stablecoins, prime brokerage and corporate treasury, leveraging digital assets like XRP. Today, Ripple is like the partner for institutions looking to access crypto and blockchain.”

The deal comes on the heels of Ripple’s recent $1 billion IPO at the same valuation. This latest funding is structured as a new common equity and expands Ripple’s investor base to include some of the biggest names in finance,” the company said.

Best known for leveraging the XRP token in payment infrastructure, Ripple has expanded beyond cross-border remittances. In the last two years, it has acquired six companies – including two billion more businesses – among them, the custody provider. MetacRail stablecoin platform, and treasury company GTreasury.

Those purchases are starting to redraw Ripple’s business. Ripple Payments, its flagship product, now manages more than $95 billion in volume. RLUSD, stablecoin recently launched by Ripple, has surpassed $1 billion in market capitalization this week and is already being used as collateral in Ripple Prime, the firm’s institutional brokerage platform.