Ripple's $10M RLUSD Lending Equity to Accion Opportunity Fund Could Generate $900M in GDP

Accion Opportunity Fund, a nonprofit small business lender, published research on Oct. 8 estimating that the $10 million of Ripple's $15 million RLUSD gift that AOF put into lending equity could support roughly $156 million in cumulative small business lending and as much as $900 million in new US GDP over the next decade. Ripple's social impact director Jonathan Perri posted the $900 million figure on X on Oct. 12, describing the donation as capital that could help generate that amount of GDP over ten years. The lending equity stays on AOF's balance sheet, and the study estimates it could attract up to $50 million in new debt capital from impact investors, with repayments allowing that money to finance later borrowers. Ripple funded the research, which was produced with TXP and ideas42 and draws on nearly 20,000 businesses and $960 million in loans; it used the US Bureau of Economic Analysis' Regional Input-Output Modeling System, and reported historical results of $5.46 billion in GDP, more than 60,000 retained jobs and over 10,000 new jobs. Perri had earlier floated a roughly $250 million output estimate based on a $50 million loan pool and capital recycling about 2.5 times, which does not match the $900 million projection. The remaining $5 million of Ripple's donation goes to education, research and a storytelling campaign including the Digital Leap Forward Accelerator, and Ripple's nonprofit commitment also covered Hire Heroes USA. Both articles describe the figures as projections from a Ripple-funded study rather than realised results.