When BlackRock wanted a settlement layer for its tokenized money market fund BUIDL, it did not build one. It plugged into a Chicago shop most retail crypto users have never heard of. Zerohash, founded in 2017 by Edward Woodford and Brian Liston, now sits behind the digital asset plumbing at Interactive Brokers, Stripe, Shift4, BlackRock's BUIDL Fund, and Franklin Templeton [zerohash.com, 2025]. The pitch to those customers is narrow and unglamorous: do not touch the regulated crypto stack yourself, rent ours.
That pitch is paying. In September, Zerohash closed a $104 million round from Morgan Stanley, SoFi, Apollo Global Management, Point72 Ventures, and Interactive Brokers, valuing the company at roughly $1 billion [CNBC, Sep 2025] [Blockworks, 2025]. A month later, Fortune reported Zerohash was in late-stage acquisition talks with Mastercard at a $1.5 to $2 billion price tag [Fortune, Oct 2025].
The bet
Zerohash sells three things to banks and fintechs: crypto trading, stablecoin payments, and tokenization infrastructure [CNBC, Sep 2025]. The wedge is regulatory. Zero Hash LLC and Zero Hash Liquidity Services LLC hold a New York BitLicense [docs.zerohash.com, 2025]. For an Interactive Brokers or a Stripe, the calculation is simple: embedding Zerohash is an API integration rather than a multi-year detour from the core roadmap.
The company says it has supported more than 5 million end users across 190 countries [zerohash.com, 2025]. Revenue was reported at $73 million in 2025 against a 222-person team [getlatka, 2025]. A November partnership with Plasma extended the stablecoin payments product onto a dedicated layer 1 blockchain [GlobeNewswire, Nov 2025].
Why it could be big
The tailwinds are concrete. Stablecoin volume is becoming a line item in real treasury and payments workflows, and the named buyers of Zerohash's product are firms with compliance officers who said yes after diligence. The Series C cap table tells the same story: Morgan Stanley and Apollo are not crypto-native funds, and SoFi and Interactive Brokers are operating customers writing checks into their own vendor [CNBC, Sep 2025].
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Series C round Sep 2025 | $104M |
| Reported 2025 revenue | $73M |
| Total funding raised | $286M |
| Reported valuation | $1,000M |
| Reported Mastercard bid (low) | $1,500M |
| Reported Mastercard bid (high) | $2,000M |
If the Mastercard talks close at the upper end, Zerohash would print a roughly 7x return on the $286 million in disclosed total funding [Tracxn, 2025] [Fortune, Oct 2025].
The team and traction
Woodford and Liston met in graduate school at MIT and started the company that became Zerohash in 2017 [Forbes, 2019]. Woodford, the CEO, was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Enterprise Technology list in 2019 and recognized as a 2025 Chicago Titan 100 [Forbes, 2019] [Business Insider, 2025]. Liston serves as COO [Forbes, 2019]. Matthew Weis is listed as CTO [Crunchbase, 2025], and Stephen Williams as SVP of Legal and Deputy General Counsel [LinkedIn, 2026].
What the bears say, what the bulls answer
The credible bear case is competitive. Paxos, Fireblocks, Anchorage Digital, BitGo, Bakkt, and Blockdaemon are all chasing some version of the same enterprise crypto infrastructure mandate. The bull answer is that Zerohash has won the specific customers that matter most for distribution: a top-three US online broker, two of the largest payments processors, and the issuer of the largest tokenized money market fund [zerohash.com, 2025].
What to watch
The next twelve months turn on one binary. If the Mastercard deal reported by Fortune closes, Zerohash becomes the crypto and stablecoin spine of a global card network [Fortune, Oct 2025]. If it does not, watch for a Series D extension or growth round at a valuation north of the September mark, and the production rollout of the Plasma partnership for cross-border stablecoin settlement [GlobeNewswire, Nov 2025].