Augustus, a startup that is building a federally chartered clearing bank for fintechs and financial institutions, said it raised $180 million to expand its dollar payments infrastructure as stablecoins reshape global finance.
The fundraising valued the company at $1 billion, with Tiger Global leading the round and investors including Hummingbird, QED and Nubank founders Ramp, Circle and Deel participating, the company said in a Tuesday press release.
The investment comes as banks, fintechs and crypto companies rush to modernize the infrastructure behind cross-border payments. While much of the attention has been focused on stablecoin issuers, Augustus focuses on a less visible but crucial part of the financial system: correspondent banking.
“We believe the distribution is disrupted at the clearing bank layer,” CEO Ferdinand Dabitz told CoinDesk in an interview. Legacy clearing systems are “slow, unavailable, take two days to clear, and close on weekends,” he argued.
Take on correspondent banking
The company is building what Dabitz described as an “AI-native” clearing bank designed around stablecoins, programmable money, and permanent settlement.
Augustus does not plan to issue its own stablecoin, Dabitz said. Instead, it wants to provide the banking infrastructure that allows financial institutions to move money across traditional payment systems and blockchain networks.
