Who Is Asheesh Birla? Evernorth CEO and Ex-Ripple Executive

Asheesh Birla is the CEO of Evernorth, the XRP treasury company whose shares began trading on Nasdaq as XRPN in mid-October 2026, and a former Ripple executive. The 388.9 million XRP that Evernorth's backers contributed in kind were worth $920.2 million at the deal's signing price and $521.5 million at XRP's mid-October close, 43.33% less.

Birla spent 12 years at Ripple, the company behind XRP, before he left to run a listed company that holds the token. Ripple alone handed Evernorth 126.8 million XRP, a stake that came to exactly $300.0 million at the signing price and $170.0 million at the mid-October close.

Asheesh Birla at a Glance

Who Is Asheesh Birla?

Asheesh Birla is the chief executive of Evernorth Holdings, and he signed Evernorth's Form 8-K as CEO when the company completed its merger in early October 2026. Evernorth's investor site describes a publicly traded digital asset treasury company that holds XRP as its primary reserve asset.

In a November 2025 interview that Evernorth filed with the SEC, Birla called his new company an XRP digital asset treasury. He pitched it as a wedge for institutions that want crypto exposure, with decentralised finance to follow "as easy as holding a stock".

Birla said Evernorth would first earn yield on its XRP through traditional methods and later build on the XRP Ledger, once DeFi matures with the right controls.

Birla also told the interviewers that each chain may have room for one or two treasury companies before "a pretty long tail". Being first and reaching scale both count in that race, he said.

Birla's shorthand for the plan was "let's get big", followed in the same exchange by "let's be responsible too". On XRP, the token covered in Phemex's explainer on Ripple and XRP, Evernorth is his bid for one of those slots.

Asheesh Birla's Career and Background

Asheesh Birla dates his start at Ripple to 2013, and the interviewer in that filed transcript put his time there at 12 years before he left to build Evernorth. Birla said Ripple had grown from a few people when he started to almost a thousand by late 2025, with hundreds of customers.

Fortune ranked him 21st on its 2018 Ledger 40 Under 40 list, with the title SVP of Product at Ripple. The entry credits him with building Ripple's blockchain tools for banks and developing experimental uses for XRP, and it notes an MBA from Wharton. At Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference that year, Birla argued that blockchains would widen financial inclusion by serving the underbanked in emerging markets.

David Schwartz became Ripple's CTO in 2018, and Phemex's profile of Ripple CTO David Schwartz covers the engineering side of Ripple in Birla's years there.

What Is Evernorth XRP?

Evernorth XRP is the name searchers use for Evernorth Holdings, Birla's Nasdaq-listed company whose business is holding XRP. Birla's company reached Nasdaq through a blank-check firm, Armada Acquisition Corp. II, which signed its merger agreement with Evernorth and Ripple in October 2025 and changed its tickers from AACI to XRPN on 30 October 2025.

The blank-check company's shareholders approved the deal in late September 2026, and holders of 80.3% of the redeemable shares took about $195.4 million in cash.

The merger closed in early October 2026, and Evernorth's new Class A shares and warrants began trading on Nasdaq in mid-October 2026 as XRPN and XRPNW. Any XRPN price from before that belongs to the blank-check company's shares, so it isn't a base for a move since the listing.

Buying XRPN gives you exposure to XRP through a company's balance sheet. Like other treasury stocks, it can trade above or below the value of the XRP behind each share, the ratio Phemex's guide to mNAV and treasury stocksexplains. If you want XRP itself, the XRPUSDT perpetual trades on Phemex. Futures use leverage, and a leveraged position is closed automatically if losses reach its margin.

What Was the XRP in Evernorth's Treasury Worth in Mid-October?

The 8-K that Birla signed lists 388.9 million XRP contributed in kind at closing, beside about $224.6 million in cash from the same subscription deals. Ripple's XRP is 32.60% of that in-kind total and the sponsor's 211.3 million XRP make up 54.34%. The rest came from an investor affiliated with Ripple and two groups of subscribers.

At the mid-October close the same tokens were 43.33% below their value at signing, a gap of $398.7 million. The sponsor's stake also came to a round $500.0 million at the signing price, so both commitments were set in dollars and turned into XRP at that price.

The 8-K's formula multiplied most contributors' share counts by the Closing XRP Price over the Signing XRP Price. At about 0.6047, that ratio took the fall before closing out of the number of shares issued.

The full gap is XRP's price move since signing, and the shares already reflect the part before closing. On the day XRPN opened, XRP's Phemex perpetual fell 4.89% to $1.341 as 121 of the 135 stablecoin-margined Phemex perpetuals closed lower.

Method: the 8-K's five in-kind XRP amounts summed, then multiplied by each price in the table. The percentage is the ratio of the two prices minus one, and the closing price is the 8-K's three-day average of an XRP reference rate.

Who Owns Evernorth XRP?

The XRP sits with Evernorth and its operating company, and the 8-K counts Evernorth's owners across two share classes at closing, 22.27 million voting Class A shares and 32.21 million non-voting Class C shares.

SBI Holdings is the largest Class A holder with 39.9% of that class. It also holds 9.0% of the non-voting Class C shares. The sponsor, Arrington XRP Capital Fund, holds 19.9% of the Class A. It owns 91.0% of the Class C as well. Former public shareholders of the blank-check company hold about 21.8% of the Class A.

Ripple holds 7.1% of the Class A directly. It received 18.1 million units of the operating company for its XRP, and the deal capped the combined voting power of Ripple and its affiliates at 9.9% by leaving any excess in those non-voting units.

For scale, Ripple's 126.8 million XRP is about an eighth of the up to 1 billion XRP a month it can release under the escrow system in Phemex's guide to how Ripple manages XRP supply.

Ripple, the sponsor and the Ripple-affiliated investor are locked up for six months from the day the merger closed in early October 2026. That lock-up runs to April 2027, unless a merger-type deal for all shareholders ends it sooner. If you trade XRPN, that's the month to mark on your calendar.

Evernorth is the sole managing member of that operating company, so any sale from the treasury is a call for Birla's team. Strategy has already faced that call with bitcoin, and Phemex's profile shows how Strategy CEO Phong Le defended selling bitcoin.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Asheesh Birla?

Asheesh Birla is the CEO of Evernorth, an XRP treasury company listed on Nasdaq as XRPN since mid-October 2026. Before that he was a Ripple executive, and he signed Evernorth's merger filing as its chief executive.

What is Evernorth crypto?

Evernorth is a public company that holds XRP as its main reserve asset and plans to earn yield on it. Its backers contributed 388.9 million XRP in kind when its merger with a blank-check company closed in early October 2026.

Who owns Evernorth XRP?

The XRP belongs to Evernorth, and its shareholders own the company. SBI Holdings holds 39.9% of the voting Class A shares, the sponsor Arrington XRP Capital Fund 19.9% and Ripple 7.1%, per the 8-K.

What did Asheesh Birla do at Ripple?

Birla dates his Ripple start to 2013 and left after about 12 years to run Evernorth. Fortune's 2018 list named him Ripple's SVP of Product and said he helped build the company's blockchain tools for banks.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.