Tether to Lead $1.4B NEURA Round, Add Wallet and Edge AI

Tether will lead an up to $1.4 billion Series C financing in NEURA Robotics, the companies announced Wednesday. The round names Tether as lead investor and includes Nvidia, Amazon, Qualcomm Technologies, Bosch, imec.xpand, Schaeffler, the European Investment Bank, Lingotto Horizon and InterAlpen Partners.

NEURA Robotics, founded in 2019 and based in Metzingen, Germany, builds humanoid robots, precision robotic arms, autonomous mobile robots and service robots for environments where people and machines work together.

Under the agreement, Tether will integrate an open-source wallet development kit that enables self-custodial wallets to run on robotic platforms. The kit would allow machines to accept payment for completed tasks and execute transactions within predefined operational rules.

Tether will also deploy QVAC, an edge AI runtime, into NEURA’s Neuraverse software so AI models can run locally on robots rather than relying on cloud servers. Running models on-device reduces latency and lowers dependence on remote compute resources, which companies cite as important in industrial settings.

NEURA’s Neuraverse serves as the control and orchestration layer for the company’s products. The planned integrations aim to add local model execution and an embedded payments capability to robot workflows.

“AI will move, interact, learn and work beside us in the real world,” NEURA founder David Reger said.

Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino added that autonomous machines need to process information locally, make decisions and settle accounts without always calling back to central intermediaries.

Tether is best known as the issuer of the USDT stablecoin. The size of the Series C and the participation of major technology and industrial firms mark one of the larger private financings recorded in the physical AI and humanoid robotics sectors.