Tether is exploring tokenizing its equity while pursuing a private fundraising round of $15–$20 billion that would target a valuation near $500 billion.
Tether is reportedly seeking between $15 billion and $20 billion in a private placement that would push its valuation toward $500 billion, and possibly $600 billion, placing it among the most highly valued private firms. Discussions have involved institutional names reportedly including SoftBank and Ark Invest, with some parties reportedly eyeing stakes around 3%, indicating growing institutional interest in a dominant stablecoin issuer.
Management has framed the round as both a liquidity event and a statement of scale; market participants will watch whether investors accept the proposed valuation given earlier attempts by shareholders to sell at materially lower prices.
The company is weighing issuance of tokenized shares on blockchain — a plan that would rely on its Hadron tokenization engine. Tokenization is the process of representing ownership rights to assets on a blockchain. Hadron, launched in late 2024, is described as capable of digitizing asset classes from stocks and bonds to commodities, and would serve as the technical backbone for on-chain share representation.
Executives reportedly intervened to block at least one existing shareholder from selling stock at a price that implied a roughly $280 billion valuation, an action the firm deemed necessary to protect the integrity of the raise. Tokenized equity, as proposed, aims to provide trading liquidity for private holders while enabling the issuer to manage supply and pricing more directly.
Diversification, domicile strategy, reserves and implications
Tether’s aggressive expansion underpins the proposal. Management projects about $15 billion in profit for 2025 with an unusually high reported profit margin, and the firm’s USD₮ stablecoin is cited as holding roughly 58% market share with a circulating supply near $186 billion.
The company has deployed capital into varied strategic positions, including a reported $420 million purchase of Nvidia GPUs for AI cloud computing and roughly $8.7 billion in physical gold reserves. Operating from domiciles such as El Salvador and the British Virgin Islands, Tether could deploy tokenized shares in jurisdictions where private-company shareholder limits and reporting requirements differ from major exchanges, a structural choice that raises questions about transparency and regulatory oversight.
Tether’s dual strategy — a very large private raise combined with tokenized equity — seeks to marry traditional capital formation with blockchain-native liquidity mechanisms while retaining issuer control.
