Research AI Spotlights Google’s Investment in Ripple

Perplexity, a research AI resource, recently spotlighted Google’s initial investment in Ripple in the company’s formative stage.

The disclosure originated from an inquiry by Ashley Prosper, a member of the XRP community who recently turned to Perplexity to inquire about potential partnerships between Ripple and major American technology and financial giants like Amazon and Google.

Amazon and Ripple

Notably, Prosper initially queried Perplexity on any partnership between Ripple and Amazon shortly after reports confirmed that Jeff Bezos, American entrepreneur and CEO of Amazon, had invested in the AI research platform through his investment firm Bezos Expeditions.

Perplexity asserted that there is a potential partnership between Ripple and Amazon, suggesting that this collaboration could see Amazon leverage Ripple’s technology to streamline its payment infrastructure, further improve supply chain management and broaden global expansion.

While these provisions look both feasible and attractive on paper, no such partnership exists and there are no indications of a potential one. Instead, Perplexity referenced previous reports last year, which erroneously suggested that Amazon was partnering with Ripple to leverage XRP for payments.

These reports scavenged information from an Amazon AWS Partner Profile page featuring Ripple’s use of Amazon’s AWS. The page discussed Ripple’s payment infrastructure, use cases for RippleNet and member companies. 

Latest Query on Google

Following his initial question about Amazon and Ripple in February, Prosper recently made a similar query about Google and Ripple, asking the research AI platform if Google has an investment in the payments company. Perplexity answered in the affirmative.

#XRP #XRPCommunity@perplexity_ai says Google has invested in Ripple. Thanks Sean 😉
So that's Amazon ✅️ and Google ✅️… Now, what can you tell me about Apple? https://t.co/ZWLnHCkruy pic.twitter.com/oROFqNKKlV

— Ashley PROSPER (@AshleyPROSPER1) February 23, 2024

Due to the previous response regarding Amazon stemming from false reports, some XRP community members have been reluctant to consider the latest one factual, especially newer members who were not around when the investment was announced.

Notably, Google did invest in Ripple, but this development occurred in the company’s formative years. Following the investment from Google, Ripple went on to secure extra $55 million from some global banking behemoths eight years ago, bringing its total funding to $93 million as of September 2016. 

At the time, reports confirmed that Ripple was already partnered with 15 out of the 50 largest global banks. Since then, no new development has occurred between Google and Ripple or the XRPL despite recurrent speculations. For instance, rumors from last year suggested that Google was running an XRPL node, but The Crypto Basic promptly debunked these. 

The only notable development surrounding Google and the XRPL ecosystem involved Google Cloud’s entry into the Flare Network as an infrastructure provider and a contributor to the FTSO.