- Ripple won’t pursue an IPO, citing billions in cash and focus on strategic acquisitions
- XRP remains central to Ripple’s ecosystem, supporting cross-border payments and blockchain integration
Ripple is putting growth over its public listing ambitions. Speaking to CNBC, President Monica Long confirmed the blockchain company has no immediate plans to go public, pointing to strong liquidity and a focus on acquisitions to drive expansion.
Current financial standing
Backed by a strong cash position, the San Francisco-based blockchain firm sees no urgent need to tap public markets. In her interview, Long stated,
“At this moment, we have a lot of liquidity, so we do have billions of dollars of cash on the balance sheet…”
With billions in cash reserves, Ripple is leaning into an acquisition-driven strategy. Long emphasized that the company is actively exploring opportunities to expand through strategic investments, rather than raising capital via an IPO. Long also talked about how Ripple’s current focus is simply growing their current business, highlighting an internal growth strategy that stands out in a market often defined by fast-tracked public listings.
At the same time, Long also spoke about the essential role of XRP within the broader blockchain ecosystem.
“XRP serves a couple different roles… within the blockchain, the XRP Ledger, it’s the native asset, so you need it for gas fees, you need it for the reserve account minimum, and so as there’s more users and more use cases built on XRP Ledger, that asset will always be needed.”
Ripple’s history with IPO speculations
This isn’t the first time Ripple has flat out denied all IPO speculations though.
In 2022, CEO Brad Garlinghouse suggested that a public listing could be considered after the company resolves its legal battle with the U.S SEC. However, by late that year, Garlinghouse clarified that an IPO remained off the table, citing Ripple’s robust liquidity and healthy business operations – A position the company continues to reinforce.
Expansion and strategic focus
According to the exec, the focus remains on scaling its global footprint through strategic acquisitions and partnerships. Right now, XRP token continues to be a major force in the cross-border payments space, helping Ripple gain meaningful traction in markets such as Japan – A country where XRP access has become increasingly streamlined.
Finally, Long also emphasized Ripple’s broader mission of serving as the connective tissue between traditional finance and blockchain.
“It’s not realistic that the existing systems like banks are going to plug directly into the blockchain, they do need some connective tissue, that’s what we provide… things like getting from real-world currency, fiat currency into digital asset currency, those are on-ramps, the inverse would be off-ramps, secure custody… providing stablecoins and services for the institutions to be able to tokenize assets.”
It looks like Ripple has great confidence in its growth trajectory, without needing the validation of public markets.
