The AI Industry Welcomes a Deep-Pocketed Tether

Original Author: Curry, Shenchao TechFlow

Tether made $13 billion in 2024.

You might not grasp the scale of that number. Let's put it this way: OpenAI had $3.7 billion in revenue in 2024 but lost $5 billion. Anthropic had $1 billion in revenue and also lost $5 billion.

The combined losses of these two legitimate AI companies are still less than what Tether made in a single year.

Tether has 150 employees, while OpenAI has over 3,000. The per capita output difference is roughly:

60 times.

How does Tether make money? When you buy 1 USDT, they take $1 and use it to buy U.S. Treasury bonds. The interest from those bonds goes to them, not you.

The essence of this is that Tether doesn't pay interest. Banks pay interest on deposits; Tether doesn't. You hold your money as USDT and get zero interest. They use your money to buy U.S. Treasuries, earning $7 billion in interest alone in 2024.

150 people managing over $130 billion in Treasury bonds, doing nothing, and the interest just rolls in.

Who wouldn't want to lie back with a business like that?

But with so much money, you have to spend it somewhere. Tether chose a direction:

AI.

And they're not just casually investing in a couple of projects to check a box.

First, let's talk about computing power.

Running AI requires GPUs, the more the better, and the more expensive the better. Tether provided a loan of over $600 million to a German company called Northern Data.

What does this company do?

It's Europe's largest GPU cloud service provider. They have over ten thousand NVIDIA H100 GPUs—the same kind OpenAI used to train GPT—each costing $20,000 to $30,000.

The cluster formed by these GPUs ranks 26th in the global TOP500 supercomputer list. With this $600 million investment, Tether essentially bought an AI training base in Europe.

Next, data.

Training AI requires feeding it data. Last week, Tether released a dataset called QVAC Genesis, covering 19 subjects including mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computer science. They claim it's the world's largest open-source AI training dataset.

Consider that OpenAI's and Anthropic's training data are not public. Tether just released theirs for free, available for anyone to use.

Then comes the more sci-fi part.

In April 2024, Tether spent $200 million to acquire a company called Blackrock Neurotech. It has "Blackrock" in the name, but it's unrelated to BlackRock the asset manager.

This company makes brain-computer interfaces. They implant chips in people's brains, allowing paralyzed individuals to type with their thoughts, control wheelchairs, and operate robotic arms. It sounds like science fiction, but they started in 2008, eight years before Elon Musk's Neuralink.

How impressive is this company?

Globally, only 35 people have brain-computer interface chips implanted, and 31 of them use Blackrock's technology. In 2016, a completely paralyzed patient used their device to control a robotic arm and fist-bump President Obama. A chip implanted in the sensory cortex allowed him to "feel" the president's hand.

Last year, this brain-computer interface company enabled an ALS patient to "speak" again. A chip in his brain translated his thoughts into speech at 62 words per minute.

Tether spent $200 million to become the majority shareholder of this company.

In total, Tether has invested nearly $1 billion in AI-related fields. Rumor has it they are also negotiating with a German robotics company, with an asking price of $1.2 billion. If that deal goes through, the total investment would approach $2 billion.

What does this mean?

Anthropic raised $3.5 billion in total funding in 2024. The investments from Tether alone are nearly half the total funding of a legitimate, top-tier AI company.

OpenAI spent $6.7 billion on R&D in the first half of 2025. With just a fraction of its profits, Tether can be a major financier in the AI world.

Why is a stablecoin company getting into AI?

We think there are two possibilities.

The first is anxiety. The Fed is cutting rates, and Treasury yields are falling. Lying back and earning $7 billion in interest in 2024 might not be so easy from 2025 onward. Even a money printer needs a new story.

The second is ambition. The whole world is talking about AI—investors, media, politicians. If you say you're a stablecoin company, no one gives you a second glance. But if you say you're working on AI, brain-computer interfaces, and humanoid robots, then you're a:

Tech leader.

What's most interesting?

Tether's AI initiatives come with slogans like "decentralization," "local operation," and "returning intelligence to the individual."

But Tether itself is the most centralized company in crypto.

They decide when to issue tokens, how much reserves to hold. In ten years of operation, they've never been audited. Only they know where users' money is.

And now, this company wants to teach the world about "decentralized AI."

It's a bit like a casino owner opening a class to teach people how to quit gambling.

Not that it can't be done.

After all, OpenAI is still losing money, not expected to break even until 2029. Anthropic is similar, targeting 2028. Sam Altman is fundraising everywhere, Dario Amodei is fundraising everywhere. The two companies have combined losses of $10 billion and are still pitching stories to investors.

Tether doesn't need to pitch. The money is already in their pocket.

What's the biggest challenge facing the entire AI industry? Its business model.

How to make money? Don't know. When will it make money? Don't know. Can it make money? Don't know.

Tether doesn't have this worry. Their business model is:

Don't do AI.

Use the money made from stablecoins to invest in AI. If the investment is right, it's foresight; if it's wrong, it's tuition. It doesn't affect the core business anyway.

Those doing AI are losing money; those not doing AI are making money. Those doing AI are fundraising; those not doing AI are investing.

The best AI business model in 2026 might just be not to do AI.

Get the money printer right first.