Augustus

In 2022 Ferdinand Dabitz and co-founders started Augustus, then called Ivy, in Berlin as an open-banking merchant checkout product; integrations with Mollie, Kraken and Circle later pushed it toward institutional money flows and stablecoin infrastructure.

In July 2025 Augustus decided to apply for a US national bank charter, concluding that only ownership of a licence, its own ledger and direct payment rails could remove its dependence on correspondent banks.

In May 2026 Augustus won conditional OCC approval to charter Augustus Bank, N.A., the eighth national bank charter granted since 2010 and one of the few held by a technology company with a path to the Federal Reserve.

That same month Augustus raised $40 million from investors including Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures, Creandum and the founders of Ramp and Deel.

On July 21, 2026 Augustus closed a $180 million Series B led by Tiger Global at a $1 billion valuation, taking total funding to roughly $210 million.

The capital is expanding its always-on correspondent platform and its in-house Marble core banking system, extending dollar and euro accounts plus Swift, ACH, SEPA and stablecoin settlement into Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa.

Augustus currently clears euros through a licensed Finnish entity for clients including Kraken, processing billions a year, but its charter remains conditional and it does not yet operate as a chartered bank.

On May 8, 2026 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted Augustus preliminary conditional approval for a national bank charter, the eighth such new charter since 2010; on May 11 the company announced $40 million in funding from Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures, Creandum and the founders of Ramp, Deel and Circle. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation then approved its deposit insurance application for Augustus National Bank, to be headquartered in Dallas, serving digital asset companies, AI firms and foreign financial institutions, with plans to issue a payment stablecoin through a subsidiary once permitted under the GENIUS Act.

On July 21 Augustus closed a $180 million Series B led by Tiger Global with Hummingbird, QED, Valar and Creandum, at a $1 billion valuation; proceeds extend dollar and euro accounts into Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa and fund its in-house core banking system Marble. Kraken is an early client, with cross-border euro settlement running into billions of euros a year; the bank says it connects directly to the Federal Reserve master account and dollar clearing, bypassing layers of correspondents.

Augustus is valued on its charter rather than its software: on 21 July it raised 180 million dollars at a 1 billion dollar valuation led by Tiger Global, 210 million dollars in total, aimed almost entirely at the four corridors where dollar clearing is dearest and least reliable, namely Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The split from middleware is the conditional national bank charter of 8 May: middleware rides someone else's licence and inherits the correspondent's de-risking decisions, while a charter holder is a clearing participant. Demand comes from large correspondents withdrawing over a decade, not from incumbent complacency. The near-term constraints are hard, because conditional approval is not an open bank, dollar self-clearing waits on a Federal Reserve master account, and Marble's AI reconciliation can run only on existing European entities first. It chose accounts and clearing around digital dollars rather than issuing its own token, earning on throughput.

Ferdinand Dabitz, co-founder and CEO, is a Thiel Fellow who left university to build companies and co-founded Augustus (formerly Ivy) in Germany in 2022 with three partners.

Joshua Becker, co-founder, co-founded Augustus (formerly Ivy) in 2022 with Dabitz, Wimmer and Lieck and led early architecture design and delivery.

Simon Wimmer, co-founder, co-founded Augustus (formerly Ivy) in 2022 and drove the firm's leap from a European entity toward a US national bank charter.

Peter Lieck, co-founder, co-founded Augustus (formerly Ivy) in 2022 and built engineering and operations systems.

Greg Quarles, president, was CEO of Green Dot Bank, United Texas Bank and H&R Block Bank and spent 18 years at the OCC as a national bank examiner and assistant deputy comptroller.

In May 2026 Augustus received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a United States national bank charter built for stablecoin clearing, with Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation approval; its Ivy Pay Oy unit holds a Finnish payment institution licence.