Tempo, the payments-focused blockchain project incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, has achieved a $5 billion valuation following a $500 million Series A funding round. The substantial investment highlights growing institutional confidence in blockchain payment infrastructure and stablecoins.
The funding round was led by Thrive Capital and Greenoaks, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, and SV Angel. Notably, Stripe and Paradigm did not contribute capital to this particular round, although they remain deeply involved in the project’s development.
Tempo is designed as an Ethereum-compatible Layer 1 blockchain optimized for high-throughput payments and settlement. Stripe CEO Patrick Collison described it as “the payments-oriented L1, optimized for real-world financial-services applications”. The network aims to modernize settlement systems globally and offer a corporate alternative to existing stablecoin solutions like Circle and Tether.
The blockchain is purpose-built for stablecoins and real-world payments, leveraging Stripe's experience in global payments and Paradigm's expertise in crypto technology. It is designed to meet the needs of modern payment processing, enhancing speed, efficiency, and reliability. Tempo supports all major stablecoins, enabling high-throughput, low-cost global transactions for various business use cases.
Several high-profile design partners are collaborating with Tempo, including OpenAI, Shopify, Visa, Anthropic, and Deutsche Bank. These partnerships are helping Tempo build early credibility and operational momentum as it prepares for its market entry. The platform plans to integrate with other blockchain protocols.
Tempo is designed for speed, scalability, and reduced transaction costs. It boasts the capacity to process over 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) with sub-second finality, enabling real-time payments on a global scale. The network also offers predictable, low transaction fees that can be paid in any stablecoin.
In a significant move, Dankrad Feist, a key contributor and top researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, has joined Tempo as a senior engineer. Feist will remain a research advisor to some strategic initiatives at the Ethereum Foundation. He stated that Tempo shares Ethereum's “permissionless ideals” and is "built for the next era of on-chain financial services”.
This investment and the recruitment of key talent underscore Stripe's broader crypto strategy, which includes the acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure provider Bridge for $1.1 billion and crypto-wallet provider Privy. Stripe has also integrated Coinbase's Base Layer 2 into its payments infrastructure. These moves signal a determined shift towards owning every layer of the crypto technology stack and supporting faster, blockchain-native payment rails.
Matt Huang, co-founder of Paradigm and a member of Stripe's board, is leading the Tempo initiative. Tempo is an extension of Stripe's ethos and is designed to complement existing crypto infrastructure, serving as a conduit for large enterprises to embrace on-chain solutions.
