Stablecoin bank Augustus raises $180 million to build a clearing bank for the AI era

Augustus, a startup building a federally chartered clearing bank for fintechs and financial institutions, said it raised $180 million to expand its dollar payment infrastructure as stablecoins reshape global finance.

The fundraising valued the company at $1 billion, with Tiger Global leading the round and investors such as Hummingbird, QED and the founders of Nubank, Ramp, Circle and Deel participating, the company said in a Tuesday press release.

The investment comes as banks, fintechs and crypto firms are racing to modernize the infrastructure behind cross-border payments. While much of the attention has centered on stablecoin issuers, Augustus is targeting a less visible but crucial part of the financial system: correspondent banking.

“We think distribution breaks at the clearing bank layer,” CEO Ferdinand Dabitz told CoinDesk in an interview. Legacy clearing systems are “slow, unavailable, take two days to settle and close on the weekends,” he argued.

Taking on correspondent banking

The firm is building what Dabitz described as an “AI-native” clearing bank designed around stablecoins, programmable money and always-on settlement.

Augustus doesn’t plan to issue its own stablecoin, Dabitz said. Instead, it wants to provide the banking infrastructure that lets financial institutions move money across traditional payment systems and blockchain networks.