The funding round was co led by Tether, Big Brain Holdings, 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, Sats Ventures and strategic angels including operators from Ledger, Hyperion, BTC Turk, Echo, Legion, and SOLV.
According to the press release, Utexo was founded to enable Bitcoin-native stablecoin settlement with robust, production-ready payment rails.
The CEO of Tether, Paolo Ardoino, has always believed that Bitcoin is central to Tether’s long-term vision for USDT. In 2025, Tether integrated its USDT stablecoin onto the RGB protocol, a smart-contract layer for Bitcoin, to enable fast, private, and low-cost transactions.
Today, Ardoino noted that what was missing was a production-ready infrastructure that could make Bitcoin stablecoin settlements possible at scale.
He explains, “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.”
Utexo is providing a single API layer that allows payment operators to route USDT settlement over Bitcoin native rails. Operators won’t have to manage the underlying technical trade-offs or change user experiences, custody, or compliance workflows.
How is Utexo building stablecoin infrastructure on Bitcoin?
The Utexo infrastructure enables native USDT settlement directly on Bitcoin, as well as Lightning network. The fees are fixed and predictable regardless of network conditions.
All settlement costs are paid in USDT, while transactions are settled privately, anchored to Bitcoin’s security models and completed in under 1 second.
Unlike public transaction graphs on other networks, Utexo’s approach prioritizes private execution with only encrypted transactions being written on-chain, preventing the disclosure of counterparties’ payment flows and wallet addresses.
Utexo has designed its infrastructure offerings specifically 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.
“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.
Hutchinson explains that Utexo is combining Bitcoin, Lightning and RGB into a usable payment stack. He states, “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. No existing rail offers this degree of flexibility.”
“For the first time, wallets will be able to offer their users free USDT transactions,” said Viktor Ihnatiuk, Co-founder of Utexo. “Utexo provides a built-in growth flywheel: wallets grow their user base, while USDT bootstraps adoption on Bitcoin. The divorce between the two most important digital assets is finally over. After more than a decade, we’re bringing USDT back home.”
