Ripple has invested $5 million in AI agent startup t54, following the company's $5 million seed round. Ripple President Monica Long highlighted the importance of trust infrastructure as AI agents increasingly manage real capital. The investment aligns Ripple with backers like Anagram and Franklin Templeton. Long emphasized the need for a trust layer in the agentic economy, where AI agents conduct significant financial transactions but often lack verification. Long also projected that decentralized finance (DeFi) adoption on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) could scale by 2026, citing Aviva Investors' on-chain transfers as a precedent. This move underscores Ripple's strategy to integrate AI and blockchain finance, with institutions forming crypto treasuries by adding assets like BTC, ETH, XRP, and DOGE. The focus now is on whether t54's trust layer can effectively support large-scale capital interactions.