Investors gave Ripple Prime an investment-grade rating for its debut bond, even as the rating agency that assigned it believes it is in an early growth stage.
Ripple Prime, the non-bank prime brokerage Ripple built from its acquisition of Hidden Road, closed an upsized $275 million private placement of senior unsecured notes on 18 August. The notes sold with a coupon of 8.25% will mature in 2031.
Proceeds will fund working capital and general corporate purposes as Ripple Prime expands its US clearing, financing and prime-brokerage operations.
The offering is “a testament to the strength of our business today,” said Noel Kimmel, Ripple Prime’s president.
A Rating with a Caveat
The notes received an investment-grade BBB rating from KBRA. However, the agency tempers assesment, describing Ripple Prime’s business model as still scaling, with its earnings profile in an early growth stage.
So far, its main activity is clearing and intermediation through the exchange-traded derivatives platform Ripple Prime launched in 2024.
That assessment contrasts with Ripple’s own numbers: the company says Ripple Prime’s revenue has roughly tripled year-on-year since the Hidden Road acquisition closed. This is a self-reported figure that KBRA’s rating does not reference directly.
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The Second Capital Raise This Year
The notes offering follows a $200 million equity round that closed in May at a $40 billion valuation. Both raises build on Ripple’s acquisition of Hidden Road, the deal that created Ripple Prime in the first place.
Ripple paid $1.25 billion for Hidden Road in April 2025, and the deal closed that October. At the time, Hidden Road was already clearing roughly $3 trillion a year in currency, derivatives, swaps and fixed-income trades for more than 300 institutional clients. That's what Ripple acquired rather than built from scratch.
The deal was the largest of its kind by a crypto company, making Ripple the first to own and operate a global, multi-asset prime broker.
Part of a Wider Build-out Beyond Payments
Hidden Road was one of several acquisitions Ripple made in 2025 to build out non-payments infrastructure: GTreasury, a corporate treasury management platform, for about $1 billion; Rail, a stablecoin payments company, for $200 million; and Palisade, a custody and wallet provider, for an undisclosed sum.
Combined with earlier purchases of Metaco and Standard Custody, Ripple’s total acquisition spending since 2023 has reached roughly $4 billion, extending the company beyond its original cross-border payments business into clearing, custody, treasury and prime brokerage.
Ripple has not disclosed the original target size of the notes offering it upsized, nor whether it plans further debt or equity rounds for Ripple Prime.
