Ripple's aggressive acquisitions, which continued throughout 2025, will slow down next year.
The company spent a total of more than $2.4 billion to acquire at least four companies in 2025. But that pace will slow in 2026, CEO Brad Garlinghouse said at the annual Swell conference in New York.
“We'll probably slow down this acquisition spree in 2026, which our corporate development team is very happy about,” Garlinghouse joked in an on-stage interview.
Ripple announced on Monday the acquisition of cryptocurrency custodian Palisade.
Earlier this year, Ripple acquired global brokerage firm Hidden Road for $1.25 billion. After the deal closed in October, the company changed its name to Ripple Prime.
In October, the company acquired GTreasury, a financial management provider for Fortune 500 companies, for $1 billion in another major deal. In August, it acquired stablecoin payments company Rail in a $200 million deal.
Garlinghouse summed up Ripple's goals: “Ripple clearly wants to be the blockchain infrastructure company for enterprises and financial institutions, and I believe it is ahead of the curve.”
However, Garlinghouse pointed out that Ripple is taking a different path in the industry.
“Unlike other crypto companies, we have focused on acquiring traditional financial assets,” he said. “Most of Hidden Road's businesses are non-digital. The same is true for GTreasury. We believe they bridge the gap between traditional and decentralized finance.”
The brokered acquisition is seen as a sign that Ripple will enter the TradFi space more aggressively. Prime brokers are known as the gatekeepers of the professional trading world and determine many important decisions, from the use of leverage to collateral standards.
According to the CEO, there is one thing that is not on Ripple's radar: starting a cryptocurrency exchange.
“We've been thinking about this for a long time, and we're happy to have investors on so many exchanges,” Garlinghouse said. “But this is a completely different business than what Ripple is in. I don't think we're going to go into the stock market.”
*This is not investment advice.
