Emi Yoshikawa, a former Ripple executive who helped shape the company’s Japan strategy and worked on the SBI Ripple Asia joint venture, has launched Across Ventures Fund I, a $100 million fund backed by SBI Holdings as anchor limited partner. The vehicle is structured as a fund-of-funds and will allocate capital to specialized micro VCs focused on blockchain and fintech, AI and physical AI, climate tech, and deep tech.
Yoshikawa spent eight years at Ripple, where she worked across corporate strategy, international expansion, joint ventures, and the launch of Ripple’s ecosystem fund. She also served on the board of SBI Ripple Asia, the joint venture that became central to XRP’s institutional footprint in Japan. In its official announcement, SBI said it had built a strong relationship of mutual trust with Yoshikawa during her Ripple years, when she played a central role in advancing strategic joint ventures with SBI Holdings.
A fund built to connect Japanese corporates with Silicon Valley
Across Ventures was founded in 2025. Its stated objective is to give Japanese corporations more systematic access to early-stage Silicon Valley innovation that has historically been difficult for them to reach. SBI’s involvement extends past capital. According to the source material, the firm will also support deal sourcing and investment review, using its network across Asian banking and technology to add operational support.
The investment mandate spans several sectors, but the structure is specific: backing specialist managers rather than investing directly into startups one by one. That approach gives the fund broader exposure across emerging technologies while keeping a clear cross-border angle between Japanese enterprise capital and early-stage US innovation.
XRP activity in Japan has accelerated
The article places the launch against a busy stretch for XRP and XRPL activity in Japan in April 2026. It says XRP payments were launched for 44 million Rakuten users that week, while live bank pilots showed XRP could reduce cross-border settlement costs by up to 60% compared with SWIFT. It also states that SBI Ripple Asia completed its XRPL token issuance platform and secured registration under Japan’s Payment Services Act on April 7.
Earlier, in February, SBI launched a 10 billion yen blockchain bond that paid investor rewards in XRP. Yoshikawa said in the official announcement that Across Ventures is committed to building a platform for co-creating next-generation industries with Japanese enterprises. On that timeline, the new $100 million fund reads less like a break from the Ripple-SBI relationship and more like an extension of the network Yoshikawa helped build from inside Ripple.