The round values Tempo at $5 billion, representing one of the highest valued blockchain venture rounds over the past few years. Sequoia, Ribbit Capital, and Ron Conway’s SV Angel also participated, according to one of the people. Paradigm and Stripe did not contribute capital to the round. 

The Tempo blockchain—which includes design partners such as OpenAI, Shopify, and Visa—is primarily designed for stablecoins, and represents a bet that the dollar-backed cryptocurrencies will become the new infrastructure layer for global payments. 

Greenoaks and Thrive leading the funding round is notable because the two generalist firms typically invest in mainstream sectors such as AI and business-focused software—their bet on Tempo is the latest evidence that crypto has entered the mainstream. For Tempo, bringing two of the top venture firms onboard will help it challenge leading crypto-native stablecoin companies, from Circle to Tether, as well as disrupt incumbents such as Mastercard. 

Stripe, Paradigm, Greenoaks, and SV Angel declined to comment. Thrive, Ribbit, and Sequoia did not respond to a request for comment.

Corporate blockchains

Tempo is just the latest crypto play from Stripe. In February, the payments company closed a deal to acquire the stablecoin startup Bridge for $1.1 billion. And, in June, Stripe said it intended to buy the crypto wallet company Privy for an undisclosed sum. 

Stripe has already started to roll out a suite of new products related to stablecoins, including Open Issuance, which allows Stripe customers to launch their own stablecoins. And Bridge cofounder and CEO Zach Abrams said on Tuesday that his Stripe-owned startup submitted an application for a national bank trust charter to comply with the Genius Act, recently signed-into-law legislation that establishes regulatory guardrails for stablecoin issuers.

Tempo, however, represents Stripe’s most ambitious project as it seeks to compete with long-established blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana that process stablecoin transactions. Stripe partnered with Paradigm to roll out the initiative, and Paradigm’s managing partner Matt Huang—who also sits on Stripe’s board—is leading Tempo. 

The date of its launch remains unclear, and Tempo has not signaled whether it will release its own crypto token. The company previously announced that it will remain stablecoin agnostic, meaning different tokens can be used to pay the “gas” fees, or small payments required to process transactions.

Stripe’s Tempo isn’t the only planned blockchain from a large corporation. Since January, financial firms like the online brokerage Robinhood and the stablecoin behemoth Circle have released plans to start up blockchains of their own.

Blockchains are essentially networks of servers that process crypto transactions. Forthcoming chains from the likes of Stripe and Robinhood represent attempts to own every layer of the crypto technology stack, from the software that powers stablecoin transfers to the underlying servers that process them.