Brevan Howard Brings $35 Billion Mandate to Ripple Prime, the XRP Issuer's Broker

Brevan Howard routes trading through Ripple Prime

Brevan Howard, the alternative investment manager overseeing roughly $35 billion, will route prime brokerage, clearing and financing across multiple asset classes through Ripple Prime, the brokerage arm of Ripple, the company behind XRP. The two firms announced the expanded agreement on Tuesday, October 6. In practice, the mandate covers the full institutional service stack: prime brokerage consolidates a fund's trading relationships, financing and positions across markets, clearing settles the obligations those trades generate, and financing supplies the capital behind them. Ripple describes Ripple Prime as a single unified platform spanning asset classes and products, an arrangement it says is built to lift capital efficiency and streamline operations for institutional clients. The token itself is a separate track; readers following the XRP price and its levels can find them in our XRP technical analysis. The relationship did not start from zero: funds managed by Brevan Howard affiliates were among the backers of Ripple's $500 million strategic investment round, announced on November 5, 2025, a raise led by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities that valued Ripple at $40 billion, with Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital and Marshall Wace also taking part; the terms sit in Ripple's own press release. Brevan Howard, founded in 2002, pairs macro research with structured trading and risk management for clients that include sovereign wealth funds, corporate and public pension plans, foundations and endowments. Noel Kimmel, president of Ripple Prime, said few companies can deliver the next generation of prime services that sophisticated investors expect, calling the firm's trust a recognition of the unit's strong competitive position. Group chief operating officer Alan McGroarty said Ripple has “built a differentiated platform” that his investment teams expect to deliver operational ease and capital efficiency. What remains undisclosed is equally concrete: no financial terms, no list of covered Brevan Howard funds and no go-live date.

From Hidden Road to Ripple Prime

Ripple Prime is the former Hidden Road, a non-bank prime broker Ripple agreed to acquire for $1.25 billion in April 2025 and took over that October. At the time of the deal, Ripple said Hidden Road was clearing $3 trillion a year for more than 300 institutional customers, and it disclosed that RLUSD, the company's dollar stablecoin, was already accepted as collateral within that infrastructure. The buildout since has moved quickly. In February, Ripple Prime added support for Hyperliquid, the decentralized derivatives exchange, extending institutional access to on-chain liquidity. In May, it lined up as much as $200 million in debt financing from funds managed by Neuberger Specialty Finance, money set aside for client lending, and reported that unit revenue had tripled year over year since the acquisition. In August, the unit sold $275 million of senior unsecured notes that KBRA rated BBB, then launched a Delta One business offering total return swaps on US-listed equities, indices and digital assets, instruments that deliver an underlying asset's performance without holding it, a core mechanic of institutional contract trading. Equity derivatives entered the menu on August 27 through that same Delta One line, widening a capability set that began under Hidden Road with foreign exchange and fixed income. Prime brokerage of this kind sits behind activity across markets where spot dealing, futures and crypto options clear alongside one another, which is the service layer Ripple is assembling for funds like Brevan Howard. The corporate rhythm around the unit has been equally busy: Ripple announced a $750 million share buyback at a $50 billion valuation in March, and the company has also joined OKX's $25 billion funding round. Notably, this institutional buildout has continued through both bull and bear market phases rather than inside a single favorable window.

An investor becomes a client

COINOTAG's read is that Tuesday's mandate closes a loop that opened with the $500 million round: an investor in Ripple is now a client of Ripple Prime. The companies' announcement confirms the scope, prime brokerage, clearing and financing across asset classes, while leaving financial terms, covered funds and timing undisclosed, and we flag those gaps rather than infer them. The move sits inside a wider XRP ecosystem push that also includes Evernorth's 473 million XRP treasury preparing a Nasdaq debut and XRP Ledger payment volume surging 386% in 24 hours. Sentiment gauges such as the Crypto Fear and Greed Index sit outside this corporate story. The compounding at Ripple is happening in institutional plumbing, not in token headlines.