Bitcoins
- Ripple announced strategic investments in London firms ZILO and Licuido on Monday, without disclosing the amount paid or the size of either stake.
- Licuido supplied the tokenisation technology behind Aviva Investors’ tokenised share class, which went live on the XRP Ledger on 29 July.
- ZILO, founded in 2020, has raised US$59.9 million across two funding rounds and counts State Street among its live clients.
Ripple has taken equity stakes in two British financial technology firms, ZILO and Licuido, to put regulated fund record-keeping and collateral trading directly onto the XRP Ledger. Neither the amount paid nor the size of either holding was disclosed.
Both companies already worked with Ripple, and the investments convert those partnerships into ownership. The pairing covers two ends of the same chain: ZILO keeps the regulated record of who owns a tokenised fund share, and Licuido issues that share and lets it move as collateral.
ZILO sells digital transfer agency and fund administration software to asset managers, custodians and transfer agents, with support for tokenised share classes.
Founded in London in 2020 by Phil Goffin, it raised US$33.7 million (AU$47.8 million) in a 2024 Series A and US$26.2 million (AU$37.2 million) in a Series A2 the following year, and lists State Street among its live clients.
“Ripple’s investment enables us to accelerate that work by bringing digital market utility and efficiency directly into our platform,” said Goffin, ZILO’s founder and chief executive.
Licuido runs a tokenisation and trading platform handling issuance, distribution and execution, and lets the resulting tokens act as collateral through onchain atomic settlement. Its markets arm operates as an appointed representative of Sapeno Partners LLP, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
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Collateral Is the Point
Ripple named its RLUSD stablecoin as the cash leg for delivery-versus-payment settlement on those trades. Brian Lynch, Licuido’s chief executive and co-founder, said tokenisation “by itself, only solves part of the challenge of unlocking liquidity.”
Aviva Investors listed a tokenised share class of its US Dollar Liquidity Fund on the XRP Ledger on 29 July, built on Licuido’s technology.
It follows the tokenised version of abrdn’s US$5.1 billion (AU$7.27 billion) money market fund that Ripple and Archax brought to the ledger in November 2024, the first of its kind on the network.
The investments land ten days after Ripple opened Ripple Mint, a console and API set that lets institutions mint, redeem and manage RLUSD in one place.
Ripple has put the eventual size of the tokenised asset market at US$16 trillion (AU$22.9 trillion) by the end of the decade.
José Oramas Read More