Tether Investments, the investment arm of the leading stablecoin issuer, has made a strategic investment in LayerZero Labs, the developer of the LayerZero crypto interoperability protocol.
The move represents a bet on the technology underpinning USDt0, a blockchain-agnostic version of Tether’s USDT. According to the company, more than $70 billion has been transferred across multiple blockchains using this infrastructure in less than a year.
LayerZero’s framework enables cryptocurrencies to move between different blockchains without fragmentation or liquidity constraints. This allows developers building financial instruments to rely on stablecoins without locking funds into a single network. The same architecture also supports more experimental use cases, such as AI agents managing their own wallets and sending payments autonomously — a concept Tether refers to as “agentic finance.”
Tether’s investment follows the launch of USDt0 by Everdawn Labs, which is based on LayerZero’s Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard. Together with the tokenized gold asset XAUt0, these projects are viewed as real-world test cases for LayerZero’s interoperability framework. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The stablecoin giant has been deploying the billions it earns from backing circulating USDT tokens into a broad range of investments. These include a majority stake in Latin American agribusiness Adecoagro (AGRO), a privacy-focused health app, and an equity position in video platform Rumble (RUM).
Tether has also aggressively accumulated gold, purchasing a $150 million stake in Gold.com earlier this month to expand distribution of tokenized gold products.
LayerZero’s ZRO token initially surged by up to 10% following the announcement but quickly erased those gains and is now trading 3% lower over the past 24 hours.
