The company will use the new funding to build capacity, expand to new regions, develop more merchant tools, enable cross-border and creator payouts, and maintain reliability and compliance, it said in a Tuesday (Dec. 16) blog post.

Speed’s offerings include a global payment layer called Speed Merchant that is designed for merchants, platforms and payment systems and enables them to accept both Bitcoin and stablecoins, according to the post.

The company also offers a Lightning wallet called Speed Wallet that serves individuals and businesses and enables Bitcoin and stablecoin transfers, supports global payouts, offers local on- and off-ramps, and powers USDT transactions, the post said.

“We’ve always believed that Bitcoin and stablecoins can power everyday payments,” Speed CEO Niraj Patel said in the post. “That requires real infrastructure—fast, compliant and scalable. This investment validates that belief and accelerates our mission.”

Speed co-founder Jayneel Patel said in the post that the company aims to “solve real problems with technology.”

“Speed started as a merchant solution and has grown into a global payment network,” Jayneel Patel said, adding the company is “ready to take the next leap.”

Stablecoin issuer Tether and venture fund ego death capital co-led the funding round, per the post.

Tether said in a Tuesday press release that its investment supports its strategy to support Bitcoin-aligned financial infrastructure and expand the utility of its USDT stablecoin in real-world payment environments.

“We support teams building practical infrastructure that reduces friction in payments and expands access to reliable settlement rails,” Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in the release.

Tether’s USDT stablecoin is the most traded cryptocurrency by volume around the world.

Adam Gebner, associate at ego death capital, said in a Tuesday blog post that Speed processed over $1.5 billion in payment volume over the past 12 months and serves more than 1.2 million users.

“By bridging Lightning and stablecoins in a single, compliant platform, Speed is positioning itself as foundational infrastructure for the Bitcoin and stablecoin economy, serving merchants, platforms and users across both developed and emerging markets,” Gebner said in the post.

This Series L round would value the company at $134 billion, up 34% from its last session of funding during the summer, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday (Dec. 16).

Ali Ghodsi, Databricks’ co-founder and CEO, told the WSJ the company plans to use the new funding to invest in its core data-analytics products and AI software, while also letting its workers engage in secondary share sales.

The company, among the most valuable private firms in Silicon Valley, also plans to hire around 600 fresh college graduates in 2026, the CEO added, in addition to adding thousands of new jobs worldwide in Asia, Latin America and Europe. It also plans to hire AI researchers, who are typically paid top salaries, the WSJ added.

The report noted that Databricks has benefited from the AI boom, which relies partially on private corporate data to customize AI models. Databricks told the WSJ that its data-warehousing product, which can serve as an underlying data platform for AI services, surpassed a $1 billion revenue run rate at the end of October.

This year has seen Databricks ink deals with OpenAI and Anthropic to help sell AI services to business customers. Each of these partnerships are designed to push clients to develop AI agents, or independent bots that can carry out tasks on behalf of humans.

The company’s new funding round comes three months after Databricks’ Series K round, which valued it more than $100 billion, up from $62 billion at the start of the year.

In other AI news, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week about The General Intelligence Company of New York, a start up developing agent-based systems designed to take over large portions of company operations.

“The company’s name deliberately evokes Gilded Age ambition, and founder Andrew Pignanelli told PYMNTS that the reference was intentional,” that report said. “He said he views AI as foundational infrastructure for the next era of company-building, much as railroads and industrial capital reshaped the United States economy more than a century ago.”

The company started by working backward from “the one-person billion-dollar business,” as Pignanelli termed it.

“We started at the end, the actual one-person billion-dollar company, and worked our way back and we were like, ‘What can we do today?’” he said.

The value of assets by these groups — which include private credit providers, hedge funds and insurance companies — grew at more than twice the rate of assets in the banking industry during 2024, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) said in a report Tuesday (Dec. 16).

In 2024, the report said, the non-bank financial institution (NBFI) sector grew by 9.4%, while the banking sector grew by 4.7%. The NBFI space increased its total assets to 51% ($256.8 trillion) of total global financial assets, compared to $191 trillion for banks.

Still, the banking and NBFI worlds are increasingly interconnected, the report said, “broadening the channels through which shocks can propagate across sectors and jurisdictions.”

In addition, the FSB flagged “severe limitations in the availability of data for private credit in statistical and regulatory reports,” in part because “there was no standard definition of private credit activities” between countries, making it tough to identify them.

According to the FSB, the jurisdictions covered in the report identified a “diverse set of non-bank entities engaging in private finance.” This included private credit groups along with trust companies, finance companies, structured finance vehicles, insurers and pension funds.

The report comes a little less than a month after the FSB held a meeting in which its members discussed efforts to bolster the NFBI sector’s resilience.

“Members noted that nonbank entities are increasingly important participants in the markets for government debt, but their use of highly leveraged trading strategies could amplify market volatility and instability, potentially across borders, in the event of a rapid unwinding of positions,” the FSB said in a news release at the time.

The FSB isn’t the only group concerned about this sector. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in April issued a report highlighting trouble in the private lending space.

Upward of 40% of the companies who borrowed from these lenders had, at the end of last year, negative cash flow from their operations, the IMF’s Global Financial Stability report found.

And as covered here in May, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston shows that large banks’ total commitments to private credit (PC) and private equity funds came to $300 billion as of the end of 2023, up from less than $10 billion in 2013.

When these firms are hit by shocks, the Fed said, “they tend to draw down their bank lines of credit at a faster rate than firms with only bank credit. This creates a channel through which PC funds may increase banks’ credit and liquidity risks, on balance.”