Tether, the operator of the world’s biggest stablecoin, USDT, said Thursday that it plans to enter the artificial intelligence (AI) business by early 2025. It’s a historic shift for the $140 billion company, which has spent years on stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino announced on Saturday that the company hopes to make its AI platform available sometime in the first quarter of 2025 by posting on its official X (formerly Twitter) account. This launch is the pitch for Tether to expand into Bitcoin mining, energy, and artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which is just one part of a push to enter new businesses.
USDT has been profitable on its own accord; USDT has led the business with its flagship stablecoin, USDT. However, Ardoino’s announcement talks about testing the waters through possibilities beyond the stablecoins of the stablecoin issuer’s financial might and engineering capabilities, which would be otherwise difficult to test.
Tether Invests in AI, Shifts Focus Beyond Crypto
Tether started laying GA for its brave AI investment at Northern Data last year, a cloud computing and AI startup. In October, Northern Data said it was looking to leave behind cryptocurrency mining, move instead to growing AI, and even sell its mining operations.
That didn’t mean Tether had walled off AI from its diversification. Internally, the company has reorganized into the commodities trade, financing energy, and other non-crypto sectors.
Tether has done quite an incredible job with finances in 2023. In its first quarter alone, the company made $4.5 billion in profits, wrapping up its first half of the year with $5.2 billion. These gains now put Tether in a position to fund momentum into its future growth.
Tether has also been building its presence in Europe as the European Union rallies around Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation. StabIR, a MiCA-compliant stablecoin initiative, in turn, offered support to Tether in complying with the new rules and providing more support in the region.
And it’s happening at the same time as this European push. This is yet another development in the market that tipped regulatory pressure as the reason why Coinbase delisted other noncompliant tokens such as USDT, to continue functioning within a regulated environment.
Hawkins says that Tether’s entry into AI only continues a broader pattern of crypto companies entering new revenue streams as the markets grow and regulators impact their activities. If its planned AI platform works, it’d be one of the more innovative players at the intersection of finance and tech.
Now that Tether will launch its AI platform next year, the industry will watch to see whether its diversification attempts will be as successful as its stablecoin business.
