Augustus, a startup building a federally chartered clearing bank designed around stablecoins and programmable money, has closed a $180 million Series B round that values the company at $1 billion.
Tiger Global led the financing, with participation from Hummingbird and QED. The founders of Nubank, Ramp, Circle, and Deel also joined the round, along with Circle co-founder Sean Neville, former Coinbase Chief Technology Officer Balaji Srinivasan, and Rain’s Farooq Malik. Augustus said total capital raised now stands at $210 million.
What Augustus Is Building
Augustus is targeting correspondent banking, the plumbing that lets money move between institutions across borders. Rather than issuing its own stablecoin, it is constructing infrastructure it calls a ‘Global Dollar Bank,’ designed to let banks and fintechs transact across both legacy payment rails and blockchain networks simultaneously. The API-first platform supports operating and FBO accounts and settles via Swift, ACH, SEPA, and stablecoins.
The company runs a proprietary core banking system called Marble, which it says enables faster settlement and 24/7 availability by deploying AI across back-office operations. Crypto exchange Kraken is already listed as a customer.
Why Stablecoins Are Central
Dollar-pegged stablecoins, tokens designed to hold a one-to-one peg with the U.S. dollar, have grown into a multibillion-dollar settlement layer that extends dollar reach globally while putting pressure on the slow, weekday-bound correspondent banking system that underpins cross-border payments.
By wiring stablecoin rails directly into a chartered bank, Augustus is positioning blockchain-based settlement as infrastructure for mainstream institutions rather than a consumer-facing alternative.
Regulatory Standing
The fundraise follows a conditional approval in May for a U.S. national bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Augustus said this made it the eighth bank to receive conditional OCC approval since 2010, a significant regulatory milestone for a crypto-native institution.
‘We started Augustus with a simple thesis: the Dollar is the greatest product in the world but its distribution is fundamentally broken,’ said Ferdinand Dabitz, CEO and co-founder. ‘This financing lets us execute on our mission to provide high-quality dollar access to international fintechs and banks. It’s time to dollarize the world.’
Geopolitical Framing and Expansion Plans
Augustus has framed part of its mission in geopolitical terms, citing China’s digital yuan and Russia’s proposed BRICS Pay as challenges to Western currency dominance. The company plans to deploy capital across Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, regions where direct access to U.S. dollars remains constrained.
