Atum Steps Out of Stealth With $13.5M Seed Round to Build a Rail-Agnostic Stablecoin Coordination Layer
Atum Steps Out of Stealth With $13.5M Seed Round to Build a Rail-Agnostic Stablecoin Coordination Layer #
San Francisco-based Atum has come out of stealth with $13.5 million in seed funding and announced an open payments network designed to connect currencies, blockchains, and local payment rails through a single coordination layer.
Variant, a crypto-focused venture firm, led the round. PayPal Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Road Capital, Mirana Ventures, First Commit, and Credibly Neutral also participated. Strategic advisor Charlie Songhurst backed the company as well.
Atum was founded by Pete Cooling, who previously led crypto product at Visa and served as the company’s representative on the Lightning Network and other blockchain payment initiatives. Cooling spent roughly a decade studying blockchain-based payment systems before starting Atum, tracing his conviction to 2014, when he concluded that blockchains were fundamentally payments infrastructure.
The company describes its role narrowly: Atum sits between payment initiators (apps, enterprises, and AI agents) and independent settlement providers that move the money. It does not issue its own currency, operate a blockchain, favor any particular rail, or take custody of customer funds. Settlement providers compete to fulfill payment requests across supported chains and stablecoins.
The network is open to card issuers and acquirers, payment service providers, stablecoin orchestrators, wallets, fintechs, and enterprise developers. It supports stablecoin micropayments and payments initiated by AI agents, and is compatible with two agentic payment protocols, x402 and MPP. The company says both human- and agent-initiated payments are already running on the live system.
“In 2014 I saw that blockchains were payments networks, and everything since has pointed to the same conclusion,” Cooling said in the company’s press release. “Onchain accounts are the future bank accounts, and new infrastructure is needed to make money move more seamlessly.”
Developer documentation and reference implementations are available on GitHub. Full mainnet access currently requires direct onboarding through Atum.
Copy link