Agora, a stablecoin infrastructure startup, has secured $50 million in a Series A funding round led by Paradigm with participation from Dragonfly Capital. This brings Agora's total funding to $62 million, following a $12 million seed round. The capital will accelerate the expansion of AUSD, Agora's dollar-pegged stablecoin platform that enables companies to launch branded stablecoins using shared liquidity infrastructure.
AUSD offers turnkey stablecoin solutions backed 1:1 by U.S. Treasuries and cash held with State Street and VanEck. The platform allows partners to issue white-labeled stablecoins within days while benefiting from zero-fee minting, yield-sharing from reserve assets, and interoperability across DeFi/CeFi ecosystems. Agora has already partnered with Polygon for customized stablecoin deployments and is targeting global enterprises, including non-crypto firms like Apple and Meta.
Despite entering a market dominated by Tether ($158B market cap) and Circle ($62B cap), Agora differentiates through its revenue-sharing model and modular design. Founder Nick van Eck emphasized their novel network approach, stating, "Stablecoins should be run like public goods," with most revenue passed to value-providing partners. Regulatory uncertainty has led Agora to prioritize non-U.S. markets first, though it plans to pursue U.S. money transmitter licenses pending federal legislation like the GENIUS Act.