Bullish Makes $4M Post-IPO Bet on the ‘Bank’ of AI Companies

Bullish:- Bullish, the Peter Thiel–backed crypto exchange operator has announced that its corporate investment arm put $4 million into USD.AI, an on-chain financing platform.

With the investment made early this week, USD.AI aims to fund AI infrastructure through hardware-backed lending. This marks Bullish’s first disclosed strategic investment since its upsized initial public offering earlier this summer.

According to Bullish’s announcement and company social posts, the $4 million commitment was made by Bullish Capital. The investment is as part of a broader push by crypto firms into AI-related infrastructure and tokenized finance.

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We are pleased to announce our $4 million investment in @USDai_Official, the on-chain platform for AI infrastructure financing. pic.twitter.com/q9eTwqpRRM

— Bullish (@Bullish) September 22, 2025

Bullish Invests in AI Companies’ Bank – USD.AI

Bullih describes its AI investment project USD.AI as an on-chain platform that issues synthetic dollars and structures lending facilities using physical AI hardware as collateral.

As per our analysis from company’s whitepaper, USD.AI is a simple idea: it is a web3 service that lets smaller AI companies borrow money using AI hardware (like GPUs) as collateral.

The AI hardware sector is massively underfunded – close to an $800 billion gap each year. Startups building AI models don’t have the luxury of waiting months for traditional financing. They need capital almost instantly.

USD.AI tackles this by turning physical GPUs into on-chain assets and approving funding nearly 90% faster than legacy lenders. Instead of regular dollars, the protocol issues a digital dollar token (called USDai) that people can use, trade, or hold.

When an AI company transfers its GPUs to a Tokenizing Agent of USD.AI, the agent immediately reissues ownership as NFTs. Those NFTs then act as collateral to draw loans in USDai, the project’s synthetic dollar. Because everything is handled on-chain and overcollateralized, the approval window shrinks from weeks to just a few hours.

People who provide the money (investors) can buy a yield token (called sUSDai) that earns returns from the loans. So investors get income and borrowers get cash.

The project was built by Permian Labs, which was founded in 2021 by David Choi, Conor Moore, and Ivan Sergeev. USD.AI itself launched in 2025 and has raised venture funding as it rolls out its GPU-backed lending model.

The project says, “It helps in providing liquidity to emerging AI companies who have real collateral but aren’t the size of OpenAI or have access to Blackstone”. The USD.AI project has already touted significant early demand, reporting roughly $250 million in private-beta deposits.

However, it also has risks. GPUs lose value fast – if prices fall, the collateral may not cover the loan. Further, if the borrower can’t earn enough from running AI jobs, they might default.

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The Crypto Firms’ AI Bet

The timing of the investment is also notable. Bullish completed an upsized IPO in mid-August 2025, pricing its shares at $37 and raising about $1.1 billion in the offering. The company’s shares jumped sharply on debut reaching as high as .

It has made clear plans to expand custody, institutional services and capital markets offerings since filing to go public. An investment in a protocol that finances compute is both strategic and experimental. USD.AI bet leverages tokenized capital markets while giving the company exposure to AI’s infrastructure layer.

The investment further aligns with a rising trend of crypto-native firms redirecting capital into AI infrastructure and projects. From VCs such as Coinbase Ventures to leaders like CZ, the industry is witnessing a growing crypto*AI momentum.

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