Ripple: a 50 billion dollar valuation the company set itself

By Unicorn Private Research. Published and last updated 26 September 2026.

Key takeaways

The 50 billion dollar figure comes from a 750 million dollar buyback tender the company launched on 11 March 2026, not from a third-party round.
The previous mark, 40 billion dollars, was set by a 500 million dollar investment led by Fortress and Citadel Securities in November 2025.
Ripple states it has repurchased more than 25 per cent of its outstanding shares in recent years. An earlier 1 billion dollar tender at 40 billion drew the lowest participation of any of its tenders.
The company publishes no revenue figure, and stopped disclosing its XRP treasury after the first quarter of 2025.

Ripple is the clearest example on this site of a valuation that is not a market price. The number comes from the company buying its own shares, at a price the company states. That is legitimate and disclosed, and it is a different thing from a price discovered with an outside buyer, which is the distinction a purchaser needs to hold on to.

Who set each price

Valuation	What set it	Source and date
About 28 billion dollars	Reported mark	June 2025
40 billion dollars	500 million dollar investment led by Fortress and Citadel Securities	Ripple, 5 November 2025
40 billion dollars	1 billion dollar tender offer, lowest participation of any Ripple tender	October 2025
50 billion dollars	750 million dollar buyback tender run by the company	CoinDesk, 11 March 2026

The step from 40 to 50 billion dollars was struck while bitcoin and XRP fell 30 to 40 per cent over the same period. A valuation rising while the associated token falls is possible, but it is the kind of divergence that should be explained by disclosure, and here there is little.

What is disclosed, and what is not

The company reports operating milestones: Ripple Payments volumes past 95 billion dollars, the RLUSD stablecoin past 1 billion dollars of market capitalisation, 75 regulatory licences, six acquisitions in two years including Hidden Road at 1.25 billion dollars and GTreasury at 1 billion. The chief executive has targeted a 1 billion dollar revenue run rate by the end of 2026, explicitly excluding XRP held on the balance sheet.

What is not disclosed is revenue. There is no audited or company-published revenue figure. As of 31 March 2025 Ripple reported holding 4,562,433,147 XRP directly and 37,130,000,005 in on-ledger escrow, releasing monthly over 42 months. It stopped publishing those reports after that quarter. The single largest asset inside the equity can therefore no longer be marked by an outside buyer.

The regulatory record

The SEC action filed in December 2020 ended in August 2025 when both cross-appeals were dismissed. The judgment imposed a civil penalty of 125,035,150 dollars and injunctive relief prohibiting further registration violations, and that injunction remains enforceable. The 2023 holding distinguishing institutional sales of XRP from retail exchange sales also stands.

What a buyer is taking on before a listing

A price set by the issuer rather than by an arm's length buyer, twice in six months.
Thin price discovery. The prior tender at 40 billion dollars drew the least participation of any Ripple tender, so the reference rests on few trades.
No revenue disclosure of any kind, and no disclosure of the XRP treasury since May 2025.
Direct token price exposure inside an equity position, most of it locked in escrow.
An explicit statement that no listing is planned. Ripple's president said in November 2025: no IPO timeline, no plan, no timeline. That was reaffirmed in March 2026.

Exposure before a listing

Ripple has repurchased more than a quarter of its shares, which concentrates the remaining register, and existing holders have repeatedly declined to sell into its tenders. Transfer terms and rights of first refusal are not public. Unicorn Private underwrites positions where the price has been struck with an outside party and the balance sheet can be marked, and Ripple currently satisfies neither test, which is a statement about disclosure rather than about the business.

The short answer

Ripple is described as a 50 billion dollar company because Ripple offered to buy its own shares at that price in March 2026. There is no published revenue, no disclosure of the token treasury since May 2025, and no intention to list. The equity may well be valuable. The 50 billion dollar figure is not evidence of how valuable.

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About the publisher

This guide is published by Unicorn Private Research, the research arm of Unicorn Private LLC, a Delaware private equity firm that acquires secondary stakes in late-stage private technology companies before their IPO. The firm invests only in established companies already valued above one billion dollars, not in early-stage start-ups, and its founders have been active in private equity and startup investing since 2005.

Unicorn Private is the first firm in the pre-IPO secondary market to create an open and entirely free research centre in nine languages: guides, a tracker of the largest private technology companies, a glossary, and a frequently asked questions section, free to read at no cost, with every figure carrying a date and a link to a public source.

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