Tether is putting money behind the idea of software that pays for things by itself. The stablecoin issuer led a $15 million Series A in Mural, a startup based in New York that builds the infrastructure AI agents would use to make payments.
North Island Ventures joined the round, along with existing investors. Mural has now raised $28 million in total, according to an announcement sent by email on Tuesday.
Guardrails for software that moves money
Mural is selling control. Companies using its infrastructure can cap transaction sizes, limit which counterparties a payment may reach and add extra approval steps for bigger payments.
Fintech companies call this area “agentic finance”: AI systems start and complete transactions on behalf of people or businesses. It still has an unsolved problem. When autonomous software can move money, someone needs to say who authorized a given payment and who answers for it if something breaks.
“As agents start moving money, that connection to the banks, payment networks and compliance systems the world still runs on becomes essential,” Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in the statement.
Banks on one side, blockchains on the other
Mural was founded by former Palantir (PLTR) engineers. It sells infrastructure to fintechs and other platforms for handling accounts, payments, identity verification and regulatory compliance, and it runs on traditional banking networks as well as blockchains.
Some of its paying customers are well known. Deel, the payroll platform, is one. Opera, the browser developer, is another.
Why Tether is writing the check
Tether has been backing technology that lets AI agents handle payments, and this deal is the latest. It also matches the company’s widening interest in infrastructure beyond issuing stablecoins, as programmable payments emerge as a possible use for financial services run by AI.
That use is still a bet. The work Mural already does for Deel and Opera is what exists today.