Ripple to Buy Back $750M in Shares Through April

Ripple's share buyback program — reportedly worth up to $750 million — tells a different story than XRP's price chart does right now. According to a Bloomberg report published Wednesday, Ripple Labs is running a tender offer for shares from investors and employees through April, pegging the company at a $50 billion valuation.

What Is Ripple's Share Buyback Program?

A $50B bet on itself while XRP slides

The $50 billion figure is the headline, but context matters: that's 25% above the valuation set during Ripple's $500 million fundraise in November 2025. A company doing a buyback at a premium to its last round is essentially saying it thinks the outside world is underpricing it. Whether or not you believe that thesis, Ripple is putting its own money behind it — up to Ripple share buyback of $750 million.

Ripple president Monica Long said at the time of the November raise that the company had no plans to go public. The tender offer structure is consistent with that posture — letting early investors and employees cash out without an IPO on the horizon.

The Company vs. the Token — A Growing Divide?

Here's the part worth sitting with. XRP has dropped more than 53% over the prior six months, sitting at $1.39 at time of publication. Data from private shares platform Forge Global showed Ripple's private share price had itself fallen more than 9% as of Wednesday. So the company is buying back at a premium, while both the token and its own shares have been heading south. Call it confidence. Call it optics. Probably both.

Ripple reported earlier this week that it had processed more than $100 billion in cumulative transactions. Its dollar-pegged stablecoin RLUSD crossed a $1 billion market capitalization — not a small number for a product that only launched in December 2024.

What Does the Buyback Mean for XRP Holders?

Honestly, not much directly. Ripple Labs is a private company — its shares and XRP are entirely separate instruments. But the company's trajectory does matter for the token's narrative. And that trajectory has been aggressive. The Hidden Road acquisition — a $1.2 billion deal for a non-bank prime broker — plus the October purchase of treasury management platform GTreasury, signal that Ripple is building a financial services stack far beyond what most XRP holders originally signed up for.

Add the move this week to acquire an Australian payments firm as part of a push for a local financial services license, plus the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency conditionally approving Ripple for a national trust bank charter back in December — and you've got a company that looks increasingly like a regulated fintech, not a pure-play crypto outfit.

Whether the token ever catches up to the company is the open question. The buyback doesn't answer it.