The transaction would involve new equity, with the investors getting a 3% stake through a private placement, and it is expected to close by the end of the year, Bloomberg reported Tuesday (Sept. 23), citing unnamed sources.
The talks are in their early stages, and the terms of the deal could change, according to the report.
In a Tuesday evening post on social platform X, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino wrote: “Tether is evaluating a raise from a selected group of high-profile key investors to maximize the scale of the company’s strategy across all existing and new business lines (stablecoins, distribution ubiquity, AI, commodity trading, energy, communications, media) by several orders of magnitude.”
The Bloomberg report also said a $500 billion valuation would put Tether around the value of OpenAI and SpaceX and above its closest rival, Circle, which is valued at about $30 billion.
It was reported Sept. 16 that Tether aims to match the success it has seen with stablecoins in other countries with the new token it plans to launch in the United States.
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Bo Hines, the company’s strategic adviser for digital assets and U.S. strategy, told Bloomberg Television that Tether wants to be “the largest player in the U.S. market” and that it aims to serve consumers who are underbanked or underserved and enterprises clients, including banks.
Ardoino told Bloomberg Television on Sept. 16 that the company made $13.7 billion in profit last year and does not plan to go public because it does not need the capital.
The company announced on Sept. 12 that it plans to launch a U.S.-regulated dollar-backed stablecoin called USAT and that it appointed Hines, the former executive of the White House Crypto Council, to lead the effort.
Ardoino said in that announcement that Tether has been issuing another stablecoin, USDT, for over a decade and that the token is used by hundreds of millions of people in emerging markets.
When Tether released a partial audit in May, it showed top-line figures of $149.28 billion in total assets against $143.68 billion in liabilities for fiat-backed stablecoin holdings.
