Stripe’s blockchain initiative, Tempo, has successfully closed a $500 million funding round led by Greenoaks and Thrive Capital, setting its valuation at $5 billion. This comes shortly after the recent reveal of its layer-1 blockchain aimed at both stablecoin and real-world payment solutions. Notable investors in this funding round include Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, and SV Angel from Ron Conway, although neither Stripe nor Paradigm increased their financial input, according to a source familiar with the situation.

On September 4, Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, shared on X, “as the use of stablecoins (and crypto more broadly) grows across Stripe, Bridge, and Privy, we found that existing blockchains are not optimized for them.” He added, “We think of Tempo as the payments-oriented L1, optimized for high-scale, real-world financial applications.”

Source: Patrick Collison Translation: Patrick Collison mentioned that existing blockchains are not suited for stablecoins, highlighting the potential of Tempo for payments.

While a launch date for Tempo remains undisclosed, Georgios Konstantopoulos, CTO at Paradigm, confirmed that their core team from Ithaca will be joining Tempo to develop its payment infrastructure and enhance engineering capabilities.

Source: Georgios Konstantopoulos Translation: Georgios Konstantopoulos stated the collaboration will focus on building Tempo’s infrastructure.

The competitive landscape for stablecoins is heating up, as Stripe has yet to announce a native token for Tempo. Competitors like Circle, the issuer of USDC, have already established themselves within global payment frameworks, with USDC being pegged 1:1 to the US dollar.

Given the recent legislative movements in the US concerning stablecoin regulations via the GENIUS Act, September also marked promising developments for euro-pegged stablecoins aiming to find their footing in a dollar-dominant market.