Tether has successfully led a Series C funding round worth up to $1.4 billion in German robotics startup Neura Robotics. According to reports from The Block, this massive deal represents several months of negotiations and comes after revelations surfaced last year about Tether's potential major investment in the robotics firm. The stablecoin issuer announced Wednesday that by supporting this raise from a diversified group of strategic and financial investors, the group is backing a company redefining how machines think, move, interact, and transact with the physical world. The funding places Neura in a stronger position as robotics startups draw fresh capital for AI-powered machines, with the company now firmly among global leaders in the robotics race.
What sets this funding round apart is Tether's Wallet Development Kit (WDK) integration, which equips Neura's robots with self-custodial crypto wallets allowing machines to receive payments, transact with other machines, and execute financial actions without any human approval step. As reported by 99Bitcoins, this represents a fundamental shift where the same properties that make self-custodial wallets powerful for human users - no intermediary, no permission required - become genuinely new legal and regulatory territory when the wallet holder is not a person but a machine. The WDK equips robots with their own private keys, allowing them to control their funds independently. For example, a warehouse robot with a WDK wallet can automatically process USDT micropayments for tasks like moving pallets and paying for charging stations without human intervention.
According to reports, Neura reached a reported valuation of approximately $9 billion to $12 billion during the funding process, with the company declining to comment on the figure. A person familiar with the matter confirmed this valuation to The Block, though Neura did not disclose the specific performance targets attached to the funding package. The full Series C financing could reach $1.2 to $1.4 billion, with part of the amount depending on performance targets that the company did not disclose. The financing represents a dramatic scaling from Neura's $55 million raise in 2023, with the company going from $55 million to north of $1 billion in roughly three years - the kind of funding escalation that makes venture capitalists either very excited or very nervous, depending on which side of the cap table they're sitting.
The funding round drew participation from major technology companies including Nvidia, Amazon, Qualcomm, Bosch, Schaeffler, and the European Investment Bank, as confirmed by Tether's official announcement. The investor list reflects a wider shift where chipmakers, cloud giants, and European industrial firms all want exposure to humanoid hardware, with public lenders such as the EIB now treating the sector as a strategic priority. Beyond capital, the partnership embeds Tether's edge-first AI runtime into NEURA's Neuraverse software ecosystem, positioning the company's QVAC platform as the backbone of on-device intelligence. This design keeps data and decisions on the robot itself, allowing wallet-equipped machines to work in factories or homes without constant connectivity. The timing stands out as Tether posted a $1.04 billion profit in the first quarter of 2026, providing the cash to back its billion-dollar robotics plan.
Under CEO Paolo Ardoino, the El Salvador-based company is expanding its investment portfolio beyond traditional crypto sectors into agriculture, brain tech, and sports industries. According to CoinDesk, Tether made over $10 billion in profit in the first nine months of 2025 by investing in these diversified sectors. The Neura investment represents part of this strategic expansion, with the company building its own technology directly into Neura's systems. The robots will receive independent digital wallets that allow them to be paid automatically upon job completion and make electronic payments to other machines, eliminating human managers, paperwork, and bank delays. This positions Tether to become the financial infrastructure layer for the physical world, expanding beyond traditional stablecoin transactions into new transaction categories.
