Ark Labs has raised $5.2 million in a seed round to unlock Bitcoin capital using its flagship technology, Arkade. The round includes Tether, Ego Death Capital, Epoch VC, Lion26, Sats Ventures, and Contribution Capital, with participation from Anchorage Digital, Ralph Ho (former VP of finance at PayPal), and other digital asset and fintech participants.
The raise brings Ark Labs’ total institutional backing to more than $7.7 million, following a pre-seed round backed by Draper Associates, Fulgur Ventures, and Axiom Capital.
Arkade delivers an open, neutral, and scalable execution layer designed to power commerce, retail payments, and financial applications. The platform has been live since October 2025, with partners already building across payments, lending, and cross-network settlement.
“Bitcoin is the most liquid digital asset in the world, but it has lacked the programmable infrastructure that financial applications require,” said Marco Argentieri, CEO of Ark Labs. “Arkade changes that. Our partners are building payments, lending, and digital assets solutions on Bitcoin, and Tether’s involvement will be key to accelerate these efforts.”
Commerce and retail payments demand more than simple value transfer. Authorization, holds, conditional terms, escrow: these programmable operations are table stakes for any serious payment network. The same primitives power emerging use cases in autonomous commerce, where AI agents need enforceable spending constraints and conditional execution to transact safely on behalf of users. Arkade brings those programmable tools to wallets, fintechs, and asset issuers with instant execution and Bitcoin settlement guarantees.
“Stablecoins were born on Bitcoin, and expanding access on the Bitcoin network remains a priority for us,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether. “Ark Labs is building infrastructure that makes it easier to issue, move, and settle stablecoins directly on Bitcoin. Improving access to USD₮ on the most secure and widely recognized blockchain supports greater financial inclusion, more efficient cross-border payments, and stronger global liquidity.”
The capital will accelerate team expansion across developer relations and product, partner onboarding, and the developer tooling needed to bring stablecoin and Bitcoin liquidity together at production scale.
“Every fintech building digital products faces the same question: whose infrastructure do you depend on?” said Alex Bergeron, head of ecosystem at Ark Labs. “On other networks, that infrastructure is increasingly permissioned, driven by a single company’s interests. Arkade is the open, neutral alternative.”