Tether's $20 billion financing plan was exposed, which may set a global record for the highest amount and valuation in a first-round financing

Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher

On September 24, Bloomberg reported that Tether is currently in early negotiations with potential investors, planning to raise between $15 billion and $20 billion through a private placement in exchange for approximately 3% equity. The deal is reportedly being advised by Cantor Fitzgerald, and is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The report also stated that this move could raise Tether's valuation to around $500 billion, placing it among the world's most valuable private companies, alongside tech giants like OpenAI and SpaceX. Currently, Tether's most direct competitor, Circle, has a public market value of only about $30 billion, while the valuation of another crypto giant, Binance, has been estimated by several media outlets, including Bloomberg and Fortune, to be as high as $300 billion.

Since Tether has not previously engaged in public financing, this also means that Tether's first round of financing has set records globally in terms of both amount and valuation. Previously, these two records belonged to the AI company Thinking Machines Lab, which completed a $2 billion financing round this year at a valuation of $10 billion.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino later posted on X that the company is evaluating financing from a group of high-profile key investors to maximize the company's strategic scale in existing and new business lines (stablecoins, distribution channels, AI, commodity trading, energy, communications, media).

Fundamentally, according to Coingecko data, the current circulating market value of USDT is approximately $172.875 billion, accounting for over 57% of the total stablecoin market size of about $300 billion.

Former Binance/Bybit employee Crypto Ex-Insider believes that the $500 billion target makes Tether more like a shadow central bank, and the new capital of $20 billion marks its expansion from settlement to strategic layout, which may indicate that stablecoins are challenging sovereign influence.

The confidence supporting this fundraising is Tether's profitability. According to official disclosures, a net profit of $4.9 billion was achieved in Q2 2025, with a profit margin as high as 99%. Crypto trader AT_XQ stated that Tether's fundraising is equivalent to "putting another printing machine on the money printer." He pointed out that Tether's $4.9 billion profit last quarter mainly came from U.S. Treasury bonds and Bitcoin holdings; if the financing materializes, it will enhance USDT liquidity and possibly drive the next wave of increases, but the risk of regulatory intervention remains.

In terms of reserves and asset structure, Tether's reserve assets include over $127 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds, about 100,000 Bitcoins, over $20 billion in equities, and $7 billion in excess reserve buffers.

In addition to its core stablecoin business, Tether has expanded into broader financial infrastructure, including a $500 million investment in Bitcoin mining, AI, and renewable energy projects, as well as supporting cross-border payments, DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) payroll distribution, and the Web3 ecosystem.

According to RootData, Tether has significantly accelerated its external investment pace since May 2024, with a total of 27 investment instances. At the same time, Tether has launched several new businesses, including the asset tokenization platform Hadron and the stablecoin Layer1 Stable. Combined with this massive financing, it clearly demonstrates Tether's grand ambition to build a crypto empire.

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