Funding

Washington-Based Cari Raises $32.5M in Funding

Sep 3, 2026 | By Devin Jacobs

SUMMARY

Cari raised $32.5M in funding.
The funding will support production and digital money growth.
Cari builds infrastructure for regulated digital money.

Cari, a Washington, DC-based provider of a bank-governed digital money network, has raised $32.5 million in a funding round.

The round saw backers First Horizon Bank, Huntington Bank, KeyBank, M&T Bank, Old National Bank, SouthState Bank, and Glacier Bank.

The company will use the capital to move its network toward production, onboard more banks, expand programmable money use cases and strengthen digital asset capabilities.

Funding Snapshot

Metric	Details
Fundraise Amount	$32.5 Million
Valuation	Not disclosed
Company	Cari
Sector	Fintech / Digital Payments
Headquarters	Washington, DC, US

RECOMMENDED FOR YOU

Funding

[Funding alert] TX-based Closinglock Secures $12Million in Series A Round Funding

Devin Jacobs

Feb 9, 2024

Funding

Caldera Therapeutics Launches with $112.5M in Total Capital

Startuprise

Jan 15, 2026

Funding

AI Detector Pangram Scores $9M in Funding led by Menlo Ventures

Devin Jacobs

Jul 30, 2026

About Cari

Founded by Gene Ludwig, Louie Giacomini, and Phoebe Kunitomi, Cari is building shared infrastructure that allows banks to bring regulated money on-chain while offering faster, always on and programmable financial services.

The Cari Network connect's chartered banks through a shared ledger, and uses a permissioned Layer 2 blockchain anchored to Ethereum.

Core offerings include:

Tokenized deposit network
24/7/365 settlement
Programmable financial services
Digital asset infrastructure for banks

Core Technologies / Products / Services

Capability/Product	Application/Use Case
Tokenized Deposits	Enables commercial bank deposits to move on-chain
Shared Ledger	Connects participating chartered banks
Permissioned Layer-2 Blockchain	Provides regulated blockchain infrastructure
Programmable Money	Supports automated and flexible financial services

Leadership Comments

“There is no stronger endorsement of what we are building than having the banks we are building it with choose to invest alongside us,” said Gene Ludwig, founder and CEO of Cari. “From day one, we’ve believed that banks should be at the center of how digital money evolves, not adapting to infrastructure built without their input or influence.

Bryan Jordan, Chairman, President and CEO of First Horizon Bank, comments: “The benefits of tokenized deposits should be available to all clients. Cari’s shared infrastructure gives us access to capabilities that would be difficult and costly to develop independently, while allowing us to continue competing on the relationships and service that differentiate First Horizon.