Tether invests in the next generation of programmable solutions for financial applications on Bitcoin.
Ark Labs has announced the closing of a $5.2 million seed round aimed at building financial infrastructure on Bitcoin. The round includes participation from Tether, alongside Ego Death Capital, Epoch VC, Lion26, Sats Ventures, and Contribution Capital. Investors also include Anchorage Digital and Ralph Ho, former VP of Finance at PayPal.
The funding brings the total institutional capital raised by Ark Labs to $7.7 million, following a previous pre-seed round backed by Draper Associates, Fulgur Ventures, and Axiom Capital.
The newly raised capital will be used to expand the team in developer relations and product, accelerate the onboarding of commercial partners, and develop the tools needed to bring stablecoin and bitcoin liquidity to production scale.
Alongside the funding announcement, Ark Labs also launched support for stablecoins and digital assets on Arkade, its execution platform. Partners can now issue, transfer, and settle tokenized assets directly on Bitcoin.
The platform aims to function as an open, neutral, and scalable execution layer for next-generation financial applications, including commercial payment systems, retail payments, neobanks, and other financial services.
According to Ark Labs, commerce and retail payments require capabilities that go beyond simple value transfers. Operations such as authorizations, fund locking, lending, conditional terms, and escrow are fundamental requirements for any professional payment network.
These applications also enable emerging use cases in autonomous commerce, where AI agents require enforceable spending constraints and conditional execution to operate safely on behalf of users. Arkade provides these tools to wallets, fintech companies, and asset issuers with instant execution and settlement guarantees on Bitcoin.
Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, commented on the investment, noting that “stablecoins were born on Bitcoin, and expanding access on the Bitcoin network remains a priority for us.” According to Ardoino, Ark Labs is building infrastructure that facilitates the issuance, movement, and settlement of stablecoins directly on Bitcoin.
The Tether CEO added that improving access to USDT on the most secure and widely recognized blockchain supports greater financial inclusion, more efficient cross-border payments, and stronger global liquidity.
