Ripple is funding a blockchain research initiative at the University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business. : The University of Texas at Austin is among one of the first academic institutions to receive funding from Ripple, the San Francisco-based distributed ledger technology startup. The company pledged to invest $2 million over the next five years in the university's McCombs School of Business to support its Blockchain Research Initiative, according to The Daily Texan. The funding by Ripple is part of the $50 million it pledged to invest in blockchain research by universities around the world, as previously reported by CoinDesk.