Ripple raises $200M Series C led by global investment firm Tetragon at a $10B valuation
Ripple, a San Francisco-based company that uses cryptocurrency to move money across borders, announced a massive funding round on Thursday that values the company at $10 billion.
Fortune
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2019 round is the midpoint of a decade-long escalation: Ripple Labs' $28M Series A in 2015 funded an early bet on moving money across borders with cryptocurrency, and four years later Tetragon's $200M Series C priced that bet at $10B — institutional capital arriving at scale into a sector still fighting for legitimacy.
Tetragon's lead gives Ripple a $10B valuation and $200M of fresh capital, making it one of the best-funded cross-border payments companies of the crypto era and extending its runway against incumbent correspondent banking rails.
The round marks a shift in Ripple's investor base from venture-stage backers like its 2015 Series A syndicate to global investment firms writing nine-figure checks.
Second-order effects
Institutional validation at $10B set the template for the larger rounds that followed — Citadel and Fortress entering at $40B in 2025 shows traditional finance buyers repricing Ripple as payments infrastructure rather than a speculative crypto asset.
A rising private valuation with no IPO creates a liquidity gap for employees and early investors, which the company eventually addressed through the 2026 tender offer rather than a public listing.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, late-stage crypto-native companies mature like any other private infrastructure firm: successive mega-rounds, acquisitions, and buybacks substitute for public markets, concentrating ownership among global investment firms while retail exposure stays indirect.
Cross-border settlement migrating onto crypto rails moves pricing power in international payments away from bank intermediaries toward whichever platform — Ripple among them — controls the corridor network.
The trend: Crypto-based payments infrastructure is graduating from venture bets into privately held giants whose valuations compound across rounds while liquidity is managed through buybacks instead of IPOs.
This. XRP, like almost all ICO coins, doesn't need to exist and gives you no real rights to anything. It's purpose is to make Ripple money, by selling it to suckers. https://twitter.com/...
Ripple's $200m raise parallels to Circle's $110m raise in 2018. We already know the story to come. https://techcrunch.com/... https://techcrunch.com/...
“We are in a strong financial position to execute against our vision,” said Ripple CEO BG in a statement. “As others in the blockchain space have slowed their growth or even shut down, we have accelerated our momentum and industry leadership throughout 2019 https://twitter.com/..…
@bgarlinghouse What is the $ for? Brad very bullish in this article, noted that they don't need it but like the flexibility. It will be used in part to open more offices globally & hire 150 new employees. Also said XRP used in %15 of MGI volume in Mexico. (gone up) https://fortun…
How ripple keeps securing investment is beyond me. All they literally do is sell their token, that's where their revenue comes from because they literally do nothing as a company. https://twitter.com/...
If Ripple ever somehow makes it work as a payments company, it will be the equity holders that benefit and the XRP holders holding a massive bag. XRP is a revenue generating mechanism for Ripple, nothing else. Ripple has so far sold $1.2 billion in XRP - majority of its revenue h…
Ripple is proving to be a lot more capable than the Ethereum Foundation and ConsenSys, two grossly incompetent orgs who can only get funding by dumping on the community. It's hardly a competition. ETH is very well positioned to become the worst performing shitcoin in 2020 https:/…
if ur product is so good that it will change finance, needing 200M to market it feels odd reminds me of this old DValentine quote: “I'm looking to invest in companies that can screw everything up and still succeed because the customer pulls the product out of their hands” https:/…
In an interview with Fortune, CEO Brad Garlinghouse said Ripple currently has more than 300 customers. He expects Ripple's customer base to grow 30-40% in 2020, and says transaction volume on the company's network will increase more than 600%. https://fortune.com/...
...Forbes article with more details attached. Ambitious growth targets for next year. And Ripple appears to be more committed to XRP than ever. https://fortune.com/...
** Breaking ** Ripple Raises $200 Million to Push Adoption of XRP Cryptocurrency “It's been a tremendous, tremendous year for Ripple,” he says, adding that the company will be disclosing more numbers and major announcements in early 2020. #ripple https://fortune.com/...