Tether leads $15M round in AI payments startup Mural

Tether, the issuer of the largest dollar stablecoin, has led a $15 million Series A round in Mural, a New York startup building payment infrastructure that AI agents can use. The deal was announced in an emailed statement on Tuesday, CoinDesk reported. Here is what it involves.

The round

Tether led the raise, with North Island Ventures and Mural's existing investors also taking part. The new money brings Mural's total funding to $28 million. The valuation was not disclosed.

What Mural actually does

Mural was founded by former Palantir engineers. It sells infrastructure to fintechs and other platforms so they can open and manage accounts, send payments, verify customers' identities and handle regulatory compliance — across both traditional banking networks and blockchains. Payroll platform Deel and browser maker Opera are among its customers.

Why "agentic finance" is the hook

The bet is on software that pays on its own. In "agentic finance", AI systems start and complete transactions on behalf of people or companies. That raises an obvious question: who authorised a payment, and who is accountable when an agent gets it wrong? Card networks are chasing the same market — see Mastercard's Agent Pay for machines — and on-chain, AI agents have already made millions of small payments, as Chainalysis found with x402.

The guardrails

Mural's answer is configurable controls. Companies can cap how much an agent may spend, limit which counterparties it can pay and require an extra approval step for larger transfers. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in the statement that once agents start moving money, the link to "the banks, payment networks and compliance systems the world still runs on" becomes essential.

What it says about Tether

Tether has been putting its profits to work well beyond issuing USDT, and this deal extends that push into programmable payments, where stablecoins are a natural settlement asset for machines. For a refresher on how dollar tokens work and where their risks lie, read what a stablecoin is.