Tether has led a $15 million Series A funding round in Mural, bringing the New York-based AI-focused payment startup's total funding to $28 million. The investment, which included participation from North Island Ventures and existing investors, was announced on Tuesday according to an emailed statement. Mural, founded by former Palantir engineers, provides fintechs and platforms with infrastructure for managing accounts, payments, identity verification and regulatory compliance across traditional banking networks and blockchains. The company's customers include payroll platform Deel, browser developer Opera, and financial technology platform Axexo. According to Mural's October 20 announcement, the company plans to use the investment to expand internationally and develop the banking, payment and compliance services needed for software agents to conduct financial transactions.
The funding advances Tether's push into agentic finance as companies develop safeguards that allow AI systems to execute transactions on behalf of people and businesses. As Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated, "As agents start moving money, that connection to the banks, payment networks and compliance systems the world still runs on becomes essential." Mural's infrastructure allows companies to set transaction limits, restrict counterparties and require additional approvals for larger payments, addressing questions around authorization and accountability when autonomous software moves money. The investment reflects Tether's growing interest in infrastructure beyond stablecoin issuance, particularly as programmable payments emerge as a potential use case for AI-powered financial services. Mural CEO Sinclair Toffa described the company's next stage as extending financial infrastructure beyond businesses and individuals to autonomous software operating on their behalf, noting that "the economy is about to gain 10 billion new participants, and none of them are human."
Tether has joined Tenstorrent's $1.5 billion Series E funding round at a $6.2 billion valuation, according to an official statement provided to Bloomberg News. The cryptocurrency company's participation adds an AI hardware investment to its existing work on software and automated payments. Tether announced its participation on October 20, just one day after Tenstorrent disclosed it had completed its financing round. Neither company disclosed Tether's investment amount or ownership stake in the transaction. The stablecoin issuer has therefore backed companies operating in different parts of the AI industry, including payment services, autonomous software and computing infrastructure. Tenstorrent closed its Series E on October 19, with Trace Capital and Innovation X leading the $1.5 billion equity financing. The company's operations include Santa Clara and Austin, with proceeds supporting large-scale deployment of Galaxy servers and development of AI and CPU designs it licenses to chipmakers.
Mural has demonstrated significant growth in its payment processing capabilities since launching its API in 2025. The company reported processing $2.1 billion in payments for users across 128 countries since introducing its application programming interface, with payment volume recorded so far in 2026 being nearly six times its total for 2025. The platform connects traditional banking, stablecoins and compliance tools to support payments authorized for AI agents, with businesses able to offer accounts holding dollars, local currencies and stablecoins without managing separate financial infrastructure for each payment method. Mural's founders developed their approach while working at Palantir, where they helped large companies connect software systems performing different functions, and now apply a similar model to financial services with engineers working directly alongside customers to establish integrations across individual markets. Proceeds from the latest funding will support hiring, licensing, compliance, and expansion into additional markets.
According to Bloomberg News, Tenstorrent identifies Trace Capital and Innovation X as the round's leaders, with Tether Investments named among the other participants. The investor list includes prominent institutional investors such as ARK Invest, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Morgan Stanley, Sandisk, T. Rowe Price, Eclipse and XTX Markets. The company's previous funding round raised more than $693 million in December 2024 at a $2.6 billion pre-money valuation, as reported by Reuters. The new price represents more than double Tenstorrent's $2.6 billion valuation in late 2024, according to TechCrunch. The valuation represents a 2.4x increase from the December 2024 Series D round, with the company choosing independence over strategic acquisition offers from Intel and Qualcomm at reported valuations of $8-10 billion. Mural recently changed its name from Mural Pay, with the rebrand announced on October 14, though the company's existing team, licenses and compliance arrangements remain unchanged.
