The startup Utexo has raised $7.5 million in a seed funding round led by Tether, Big Brain Holdings, and Portal Ventures.

Utexo has raised $7.5M from @tether, @BigBrainVC, and @PortalVentures to bring USDT natively on Bitcoin.

After more than a decade, USDT is finally coming home. pic.twitter.com/Y8vIh0zU4P

— Utexo (@utexocom) March 6, 2026

Other participants include Franklin Templeton, Maven11 Capital, Fulgur Ventures, Alchemy VC, Ethereal Ventures, and several other investors.

Utexo is developing a solution for facilitating settlements in the native stablecoin USDT on the Bitcoin blockchain. The project offers its own channels on the Lightning Network for transactions in the "stablecoin" with fixed fees.

According to the developers, transfers are processed atomically and confidentially, adhering to Bitcoin's security model and completing in less than a second. To prevent the disclosure of data about flows, counterparties, and wallets, only encrypted transaction information is recorded on the public blockchain.

"Bitcoin has always been central to the company's long-term strategy regarding USDT. Market cycles come and go, but the need for an open and resilient settlement infrastructure remains constant," said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino.

He believes Utexo provides a viable scalable solution "with predictable costs and seamless integration." This aims to strengthen the position of the first cryptocurrency network as a global settlement system for transferring value worldwide, he emphasized.

"Utexo provides an embedded growth mechanism: wallets expand the user base, and USDT drives Bitcoin adoption. The gap between these two major digital assets is finally closing," stated Utexo co-founder Viktor Ignatyuk.

It is worth noting that in 2025, Tether's net profit exceeded $10 billion. The company is actively investing its free funds and, just in February, became a strategic investor in LayerZero Labs, the developer of the interoperability protocol, the operator of the Hyperliquid application Dreamcash, and also acquired a stake in the online marketplace Whop.