Tether
Issuer of the USD₮ stablecoin, founded in 2014, with activities in tokenised gold, Bitcoin mining, peer-to-peer communication, AI and education, and a growing venture investment portfolio.
Industry: Stablecoin issuance and digital assets | Founded: 2014
About Tether
Tether is a digital-asset company best known for issuing USD₮, a US dollar stablecoin that its website calls the world's largest. The company describes itself as a technology company that aims to help individuals, communities, cities and nations become self-sustainable, independent and free, and organises its activities into pillars including Finance, Power, Data and Edu.
Tether says it was founded in 2014 to enable arbitrage between crypto exchanges. USD₮ was first designed for crypto trading and later became widely used in emerging markets for savings, remittances and cross-border trade. The company's history page records USD₮'s market capitalisation passing $1 billion in 2017, $25 billion in 2019 and $100 billion in 2024, and the launch of the gold-backed XAU₮ in 2020. Paolo Ardoino is chief executive, according to Fortune in August 2026, and CoinDesk reported in October 2026 that Bo Hines leads its US division.
Beyond stablecoins, Tether lists Bitcoin mining, energy, peer-to-peer communication and artificial intelligence among its businesses. Its site cites more than 15 active Bitcoin mining sites, more than 20,000 dedicated AI GPUs and more than 19,500 students in its education programmes, and offers Keet, a peer-to-peer communication app. On 14 October 2026 its AI research unit released QVAC TranscribePsy, an open-source speech recognition model.
Tether has been an active investor. TechScoop reported that it led the $7.5 million seed round of the UAE-based Utexo in March 2026. In October 2026 its news page announced that Tether led the pre-seed round of the Bolivian fintech Peso, that Tether Capital joined Tenstorrent's $1.5 billion Series E, and that it made a strategic investment in AIsa.
Tether's quarterly attestation for the second quarter of 2026, prepared by BDO and released on 31 July 2026, showed net operating profit of about $1.5 billion, assets of $187.75 billion against liabilities of $183.64 billion at 30 June, and USD₮ in circulation of $184.6 billion, according to Forklog. Fortune reported in August 2026 that Tether had engaged KPMG to audit its reserves, and that the company counted over 650 million users worldwide.
Leadership
- Paolo Ardoino, Chief Executive Officer