Stablecoin banking startup Augustus has secured a rare conditional national bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and raised $40 million to expand its U.S. operations. Founded in 2022 and led by 25-year-old CEO Ferdinand Dabitz, the company is building payment infrastructure around stablecoins and AI, with the goal of modernizing how dollar and euro transactions move across borders. According to Fortune, the charter is only the eighth full-service federal bank charter granted by the OCC since 2010.
The approval gives Augustus a more powerful regulatory position than fintechs operating under narrower trust charters, which can restrict customer deposits or limit access to Federal Reserve master accounts. Augustus already holds European payment licenses and clears cross-border euro transactions for institutional clients, including cryptocurrency exchange Kraken. Dabitz said the company is processing billions of euros and growing tenfold year over year.
The company’s $40 million round was backed by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Creandum, and founders of Ramp, Deel, and Circle. Augustus plans to use the capital to grow its engineering teams in New York and Dallas as it builds clearing infrastructure designed for automated settlement. The company says its system replaces parts of the manual correspondent banking process with code that can interact with AI agents and stablecoins.
Augustus has also built a leadership team with banking and regulatory experience. Greg Quarles, a former OCC executive and former Green Dot Bank chief executive, serves as President, while former JPMorgan executive Joe Schenone serves as Chief Financial Officer. Dabitz told Fortune that the traditional process for clearing dollar transactions is broken, adding, “We think there’s an opportunity to rebuild it around stablecoins and technology, including, of course, AI.”
