Peter Thiel-backed payments startup Augustus received conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a US national bank built around artificial intelligence and stablecoin-based payments.
The approval, announced Monday, would allow Augustus to expand its existing European banking operations into the US, as financial firms increasingly compete to modernize cross-border settlement infrastructure using tokenized dollars and blockchain-based payment systems.
The company describes Augustus National Bank as “the first clearing bank for the AI era,” built on an AI and stablecoin-native core designed to interact directly with machine agents at “the speed of compute,” rather than relying on batch processes and human clerks.
Founded in 2022, Augustus operates under European banking licences and says it already processes billions of dollars for institutional clients, including cryptocurrency exchange Kraken. Its proposed US national bank charter, however, is still at the conditional approval stage and will only become effective once the OCC’s pre-opening requirements are satisfied.
Augustus secures OCC conditional approval. Source: PR Newswire
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While companies such as Ripple and Circle have pursued national trust bank charters under the OCC framework, only a limited number of digital asset firms have reached comparable advanced stages in the federal chartering process. The OCC approval places Augustus among a small group of companies that have progressed toward a national bank charter in recent years, according to the release.
Race to build the stablecoin bank
The move comes as competition intensifies to modernize cross-border payments and stablecoin settlement infrastructure in the US.
Under the Guiding and Establishing Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act regime for payment stablecoins, banks and trust companies can issue fully reserved dollar tokens, and a growing group of issuers and payments companies are testing ways to integrate tokenized dollar flows into regulated banking rails.
Circle’s collaboration with core banking provider Finastra in August 2025, for example, lets banks settle cross-border payments in USDC via Finastra’s Global PAYplus hub, and Citi and HSBC introduced live tokenized deposit services for 24/7 cross-border and interbank payments in November 2025.
Augustus, backed by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Creandum, and the founders of companies including Ramp and Deel, has raised about $40 million, according to the company. At 25, Dabitz would be the youngest chief executive of a federally chartered bank in over 100 years.
Cointelegraph reached out to Augustus for comment, but had not received a response by publication.
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