The move by Tether’s investment arm is a sign of its support for “the development of proven, production-grade interoperability infrastructure used across the global digital asset ecosystem,” according to a Tuesday (Feb. 10) press release.
Combined with Tether’s Wallet Development Kit, the infrastructure offers “the most advanced foundational rail for digital assets payments, settlements and custody for real-world use cases,” the release said.
It is also designed for agentic finance, letting artificial intelligence agents operate their own autonomous wallets and transact with stablecoins and digital assets at scale, per the release.
LayerZero Labs has developed one of the most widely used bridging frameworks in the market, providing the technology that lets digital assets move securely and efficiently along blockchains, according to the release.
“Tether invests in infrastructure that is already delivering real-world utility,” Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in the release. “LayerZero Labs has built interoperability technology that allows digital assets to be transferred in real-time across any transport layer and distributed ledger, enabling a fundamental utility within the financial industry. This enables digital assets to serve the infinite agentic AI economy that will require such primitives to orchestrate micro-payments at an unprecedented scale.”
The news came days after Tether made a $100 million investment into crypto-focused bank Anchorage Digital.
“This moment reflects years of deliberate execution,” the bank said at the time. “Tether’s investment is a strong signal of conviction from one of the most scaled and sophisticated operators in the digital asset ecosystem.”
Meanwhile, stablecoins have a growing role in the banking world. One of the clearest themes emerging from bank-led stablecoin projects is a focus on wholesale rather than retail use, PYMNTS reported Monday (Feb. 9).
“Unlike consumer-facing wallets or payment apps, most bank-issued stablecoins are designed to sit behind the scenes, improving the economics of existing processes,” the report said. “What’s taking shape is not a single ‘bank stablecoin’ model, but a family of instruments that reflect where inefficiencies are most painful, and where incumbents believe blockchain rails can quietly outperform legacy systems.”