Ripple has closed a $275 million senior unsecured note offering, with proceeds earmarked for expanding its US-based institutional financial services business, including prime brokerage, financing, and multi-asset clearing.
Senior unsecured notes are a form of corporate borrowing rather than a sale of equity, so the money is debt Ripple will have to service and repay.
Ripple Prime at the centre of the raise
The notes were issued through a private placement by Ripple Prime, the company’s non-bank prime brokerage unit. Ripple said the offering drew a diverse pool of institutional investors from across financial markets.
Ripple Prime President Noel Kimmel described the investor response as a signal of ‘confidence in our long-term vision for the growing intersection of traditional and digital asset financial infrastructure.’
How Ripple Prime came to exist
Ripple Prime traces its origins to the company’s acquisition of Hidden Road, completed last year for roughly $1.25 billion. That deal gave Ripple the infrastructure to launch an institutional prime brokerage operation, which was subsequently rebranded as Ripple Prime.
In May, Ripple secured a separate $200 million credit facility from funds managed by Neuberger Berman, specifically to expand the lending capacity of the prime brokerage business. The latest $275 million note offering adds further firepower to those ambitions.
RLUSD and Ripple Mint round out the institutional push
In July, Ripple launched Ripple Mint, a platform designed to give institutions new ways to access, mint, redeem, and manage its US dollar-pegged stablecoin Ripple USD, known as RLUSD. According to CoinGecko data, RLUSD carries a market capitalisation of $1.76 billion.
