Stripe is accelerating its entry into blockchain with a bold new venture - Tempo - a payments-focused network that has already captured the attention of top Silicon Valley investors.
The project has raised $500 million in a Series A round led by Greenoaks and Thrive Capital, pushing its valuation to around $5 billion, according to Fortune.
Other major names, including Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, and SV Angel, also joined the round. Stripe itself, along with crypto-focused investor Paradigm, sat this one out, despite being the originators of the initiative.
The fundraising marks a major step in Stripe’s broader ambition to modernize the rails of digital payments. Just weeks ago, the company unveiled Tempo as a custom-built layer-1 blockchain designed specifically for handling large-scale financial transactions. CEO Patrick Collison said the idea came from the growing need to accommodate stablecoins and crypto payments across its ecosystem – including Stripe, Bridge, and Privy – while noting that “existing blockchains are not optimized” for such use cases.
Tempo is envisioned as a blockchain network built from the ground up for real-world finance – where settlement speed, reliability, and compliance matter more than speculation. While Stripe has yet to confirm when the network will go live, Paradigm’s Chief Technology Officer Georgios Konstantopoulos revealed that the team behind Ithaca, an open-source project, will help build Tempo’s payment infrastructure and scale its engineering capabilities.
The initiative arrives at a pivotal time for the global stablecoin market. The passage of the GENIUS Act in the United States earlier this year created the first federal framework for stablecoin issuers, encouraging tech and fintech giants to stake their claims in the emerging payments landscape.
Tempo’s focus puts it head-to-head with Circle, the issuer of USDC, one of the world’s largest dollar-pegged stablecoins. Circle has also announced plans for its own blockchain later this year, aimed at supporting enterprise-grade payments and financial applications.
In Europe, regulators are fostering the rise of euro-backed stablecoins, seeking to balance the dominance of U.S. dollar-linked tokens. As governments and corporations alike experiment with blockchain-based financial systems, Stripe’s Tempo could emerge as a central player in shaping the infrastructure for the next generation of digital payments.
