Tether Backs Ark Labs to Bring Stablecoin Settlement Directly Onto Bitcoin

TL;DR:

• Ark Labs raised $5.2 million in a seed round led by Tether to develop programmable infrastructure on Bitcoin.
• The startup has accumulated $7.7 million in institutional funding and has operated Arkade, its execution platform, since October 2025.
• Tether aims to facilitate the issuance, movement and settlement of stablecoins like USDT directly on the Bitcoin network.

Ark Labs, the Lugano, Switzerland-based startup, announced the close of a $5.2 million seed round with Tether as lead investor. The round also included Ego Death Capital, Epoch VC, Lion26, Sats Ventures and Contribution Capital, Anchorage Digital, and Ralph Ho, former Vice President of Finance at PayPal. The total amount raised by the company exceeds $7.7 million, following a pre-seed round backed by Draper Associates, Fulgur Ventures and Axiom Capital.

The capital will be used to expand the developer relations team, onboard new partners and build the tools necessary to integrate stablecoin and Bitcoin liquidity at production scale. The company’s flagship platform, Arkade, operates as an open and neutral execution layer on Bitcoin. It has been live since October 2025 and already has partners building solutions in payments, lending and cross-network settlement.

Ark Will Bring Programmability to Bitcoin

“Bitcoin is the most liquid digital asset in the world, but it has lacked the programmable infrastructure that financial applications require,” said Marco Argentieri, CEO of the firm. Arkade aims to fill that gap by offering tools such as authorization, conditional holds and escrow contracts, primitives essential for any serious payment network and for new use cases in autonomous commerce with artificial intelligence agents.

From Tether’s perspective, the investment responds to a strategic priority: expanding USDT’s reach on Bitcoin. “Stablecoins were born on Bitcoin, and expanding access on the Bitcoin network remains a priority for us,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, in a statement. The company, which holds a market capitalization of $185 billion in USDT, has also made investments in Whop and the cross-chain protocol LayerZero.

Alex Bergeron, Head of Ecosystem at Ark Labs, summarized the central argument behind the project: faced with increasingly corporate-controlled infrastructures on other networks, Arkade positions itself as the open and neutral alternative for fintechs and financial institutions looking to build on Bitcoin without relying on a centralized third party.