Ripple and Circle Back OKX at $25 Billion as Its Stablecoin Push Accelerates

OKX has brought some of the biggest names in stablecoins and institutional finance directly onto its cap table.

OKX announced that Circle, Ripple, Qube Research & Technologies and SC Ventures, the venture arm of Standard Chartered, joined a strategic investment round valuing the exchange at $25 billion before the new capital.

The amount invested was not disclosed. The more important signal is who wrote the checks.

Circle brings USDC, Ripple brings payments and RLUSD infrastructure, QRT brings institutional liquidity, and Standard Chartered already works with OKX on custody for tokenized assets.

OKX founder Star Xu said the exchange did not raise because it was short of capital. His pitch is that these partners can help turn OKX from a trading venue into a broader financial platform built around stablecoins, payments, collateral and tokenized markets.

Grateful to welcome Circle, Ripple, QRT and SC Ventures as investors in OKX.

We didn’t raise capital because we needed it. We chose to bring in strategic partners who share our long-term vision for stablecoins, payments, institutional markets, and the next generation of… https://t.co/PDApT7ztOu

— Star_OKX (@star_okx) October 6, 2026

The deal extends the round led earlier this year by Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. CryptoSlate says the new backing arrives as OKX pushes beyond its exchange roots and tries to connect stablecoin settlement with institutional-grade custody and liquidity.

That strategy is already visible in OKX’s work with ICE. The companies have notified the SEC about plans for a tokenized-securities venue designed to bring U.S. equities onto blockchain rails under a regulatory exemption.

Today we are announcing a major step forward for OKXICE, the joint venture between @okx and Intercontinental Exchange, parent company of @NYSE:

OKXICE has notified the SEC that we intend to launch our Tokenized Securities Venue (TSV) under the SEC’s new Innovation Exemption.… https://t.co/jP6K3O4W1R

— Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) October 5, 2026

For XRP holders, Ripple’s participation matters less as a short-term price catalyst than as another piece of infrastructure adoption. RLUSD is already available through OKX, and Ripple now has a financial stake in the platform trying to make stablecoins useful across payments, trading and institutional collateral.

The unanswered question is execution. OKX still has to turn four strategic checks into products institutions will actually use.

This round makes the direction clear: the exchange business is becoming OKX’s base layer, not its finish line.

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