SBI Holdings CEO Yoshitaka Kitao confirmed Monday that the financial giant’s decade-long bet on Ripple Labs has matured into a core driver of the company’s profitability.
In his 2026 New Year's address, Kitao mentioned the "cryptocurrency ecosystem" as a critical component of the group's current financial health.
"Needless to say, it is these fields [referring to the Ripple investment and crypto ecosystem] that currently play a part as a pillar of the SBI Group's earnings," Kitao said.
This validates the financial giant's financial strategy that was originally developed years ago.
"In my 2018 New Year's address, I stated: 'We at the SBI Group position A&B (namely AI and Blockchain) as the technologies that will bring about the greatest social change over the next ten years... In the financial services sector, we must devote our full efforts to building a cryptocurrency ecosystem.' And we have done exactly that," he recalled.
A longtime Ripple ally
SBI Holdings participated in Ripple’s Series B funding round in September 2016. The partnership was solidified earlier that same year with the establishment of SBI Ripple Asia. This joint venture was launched to bring Ripple’s blockchain-based payment solutions to financial institutions in Japan and across Asia.
The partnership brought its first major consumer product with the launch of MoneyTap in 2018. The mobile app, which was powered by Ripple’s distributed ledger technology (DLT), made it possible for customers of more than 60 Japanese banks to settle domestic payments almost instantly.
Kitao joins Ripple’s Board of Directors. His appointment replaced Takashi Okita (then-CEO of SBI Ripple Asia).
The partnership faced its biggest stress test when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Ripple Labs in late 2020. However, the SBI stood firm. The company issued public statements affirming that XRP was not a security under Japanese law.
SBI began integrating the XRP Ledger (XRPL) into broader financial services over the past few years.
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