Ripple closed a $275 million private placement of senior unsecured notes on Tuesday, its first bond offering, to fund a U.S. expansion of its prime brokerage arm.
Key Points:
- Ripple Prime closed an upsized $275 million private placement of senior unsecured notes on Aug. 18.
- Credit agency KBRA rated the debt BBB, matching the investment grade issuer rating it gave the unit earlier this year.
- The sale lifts Ripple Prime debt financing to roughly $475 million over about three months.
Ripple Prime Notes Draw Institutional Buyers
The notes came from Ripple Prime, the non-bank prime brokerage that Ripple runs for hedge funds, market makers and other institutional clients, and drew buyers across key financial markets, the company said. Piper Sandler & Co. acted as lead placement agent. Proceeds will cover working capital and general corporate purposes inside a regulated entity, as client demand grows for multi-asset clearing, financing and prime brokerage services.
Ripple upsized the deal from its original target without saying by how much. The notes mature in 2031 and carry an 8.25% coupon, a company spokesperson disclosed.
KBRA gave the debt an investment grade BBB rating, the same mark the agency assigned Ripple Prime as an issuer earlier this year. It has cited Ripple's capital position, including the company's holdings of XRP (XRP), among the reasons behind that grade. The agency also pointed to a growing balance sheet, which the latest offering enlarges further.
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Noel Kimmel Cites Institutional Demand
Noel Kimmel, president of Ripple Prime, called the response to the inaugural sale a signal of confidence in the growing overlap between traditional finance and digital asset infrastructure.
Revenue at the unit has tripled year over year since Ripple acquired prime broker Hidden Road in 2025 and renamed it. The platform clears and finances trades across spot markets, derivatives and traditional assets, and it added digital asset spot prime brokerage services in November 2025. Kimmel said the money buys room to invest in staff and technology.
Ripple describes the unit as one of the largest non-bank prime brokers in the world. Institutional clients increasingly want a single counterparty that can clear, finance and settle positions across several asset classes at once, rather than stitching together separate providers.
Ripple Institutional Buildout Accelerates
Ripple has spent the past year and a half assembling a business well outside the cross-border payments work that made its name. It agreed in April 2025 to buy Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, one of the largest deals in the history of the crypto industry, then rebranded the broker as Ripple Prime. In May, the unit closed a $200 million debt facility from funds managed by Neuberger Specialty Finance, and counting Tuesday's notes it has now raised about $475 million in debt over roughly three months.
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