Ripple president Monica Long says the company’s latest $500 million equity raise is being put to work on integrating a run of acquisitions and expanding Ripple’s push into regulated stablecoin infrastructure. In an interview with Bloomberg Crypto on Jan. 6, Long addressed investor questions around the fundraising terms, Ripple’s plans for RLUSD under a new US regulatory regime, and whether the company is moving any closer to an IPO.
What Ripple Is Really Doing With Its $500M War ChestThe raise, done in the fourth quarter at a reported $40 billion valuation, brought in major names including Citadel and Fortress, alongside a number of crypto native funds. The deal reportedly allows investors to sell shares back to Ripple at a guaranteed price and return, plus preferential treatment in major events such as a sale or bankruptcy.
Long did not dwell on the specific mechanics, but framed the structure as favorable for Ripple and positioned the investor mix as strategic for where the company wants to go next.
“So the overall structure for the fundraiser is very, very positive, very favorable for Ripple,” Long said. “We were really pleased to welcome Fortress and Citadel onto our cap table in addition to a number of other crypto native premier funds. And what they really saw was that our business is working, you know, our strategy of creating digital asset infrastructure for businesses and financial institutions alongside the inflection point that stable coin payments hit last year was something that they wanted to be a part of.”
Long added that as Ripple looks “more toward applying these technologies to the world of capital markets,” investors like Citadel and Fortress can be “great strategic partners on that front.”
Pressed on whether the investor protections were necessary to secure the valuation and close the deal, Long offered limited additional detail, saying only that “to my knowledge, they were excited to be a part of to be investors in Ripple,” and that Ripple was “very pleased with how the terms of the deal panned out.”
Long also described Ripple’s broader effort to diversify value creation beyond the company’s XRP holdings by building what she called the “connective tissue” needed to make tokenized assets usable for institutions, custody, compliant on- and off-ramps, and regulatory permissions. She said Ripple has taken a “compliance first” approach and has acquired “70 plus licenses around the world” to support customer flows.
What Ripple Is Not Doing With The RaiseAsked whether Ripple might buy a centralized exchange, Long called exchanges “definitely key partners” but said Ripple does not plan an acquisition in that category, while noting the rise of decentralized exchanges and a broader trend of “verticalization” among major crypto firms.
At press time, XRP traded at $2.25.
