Utexo, a Bitcoin-native execution and settlement layer for stablecoin payments, announced a $7.5 million seed round co-led by Tether, Big Brain Holdings, and Portal Ventures, with participation from Franklin Templeton, Maven11 Capital, Fulgur Ventures, Alchemy VC, Ethereal Ventures, Auros Ventures, Arcanum Capital, Paper Ventures, Axia8, FlowTraders, Plan B, Gate Ventures, and Sats Ventures. Strategic angels include operators from Ledger, Hyperion, BTC Turk, Echo, Legion, and SOLV. The funding will be used to launch infrastructure enabling native USDT settlement directly over Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, with predictable costs and seamless integration for payment service providers, exchanges, wallets, and high-frequency trading firms.
“Bitcoin has always been central to Tether’s long-term vision for USDT,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether. “What has been missing is production-ready infrastructure that makes Bitcoin-native stablecoin settlement viable at scale. Utexo provides that layer. By enabling native USDT settlement directly over Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, with predictable costs and seamless integration, it strengthens Bitcoin’s position as a global settlement rail for real-world dollar transactions.” Historically, Lightning Network and RGB have offered powerful capabilities on Bitcoin but remained complex to deploy in production. Utexo abstracts that complexity through a single API layer, allowing payment operators to route USDT settlement over Bitcoin-native rails without managing technical trade-offs, rewriting user experiences, or changing custody or compliance workflows.
“We built Utexo so that USDT could move on Bitcoin the way money is supposed to move: instantly, privately, with no surprises on costs,” said Chris Hutchinson, Co-founder of Utexo. “Utexo combines Bitcoin, Lightning, and RGB into a usable payment stack. Our partners integrate our API once and can route USDT natively on the most resilient open network ever built, with full control over their cost structure.” Viktor Ihnatiuk, Co-founder of Utexo, added: “For the first time, wallets will be able to offer their users free USDT transactions. Utexo provides a built-in growth flywheel: wallets grow their user base, while USDT bootstraps adoption on Bitcoin. After more than a decade, we're bringing USDT back home.”
The infrastructure enables native USDT settlement directly on Bitcoin, including the first-ever availability of USDT over the Lightning Network, with fees that are fixed, predictable, and known in advance for every transaction, regardless of network conditions. Settlement costs are paid in USDT and do not fluctuate with congestion or blockspace demand, while transactions settle atomically and privately, anchored to Bitcoin’s security model and completed in under one second. Unlike public transaction graphs on other networks, Utexo’s approach prioritizes private execution with only encrypted transactions written on-chain, preventing disclosure of counterparties’ payment flows and wallet addresses. This allows partners to move stablecoin volume without exposure to fee volatility, congestion risk, or weaker trust assumptions associated with fully public ledgers, bridges, and wrapped assets.
Utexo’s infrastructure offerings are designed for payment service providers, exchanges, wallets, high-frequency trading firms, and platforms already moving large volumes of USDT for merchant settlement, payouts, cross-border transfers, and global commerce. Rather than attempting to bootstrap new L2 solutions or chase speculative demand, Utexo’s go-to-market strategy focuses on routing existing USDT flows onto Bitcoin as infrastructure finally catches up with long-standing operational needs. With stablecoins increasingly replacing legacy payment rails worldwide, Utexo makes it possible for Bitcoin to function as a viable settlement layer for dollar-denominated payments, bringing Tether’s long-standing vision for native USDT on Bitcoin into production for the first time. For more information on Utexo’s Bitcoin-native USDT settlement infrastructure and upcoming integrations, visit https://utexo.com/ and follow on X, https://x.com/utexocom.
