Speed1, Inc. (“Speed”), a global payments infrastructure company built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network, has raised $8 million in a strategic investment
round led by Tether, the issuer of USDT, along with venture fund ego death capital, the company said. Built by an India-based engineering team, Speed is taking Lightning-powered Bitcoin and stablecoin payments global, with the funding accelerating its efforts to enable real-world use cases through instant, low-cost transactions worldwide. Founded by entrepreneurs Niraj (Raj) Patel and Jay Patel, Speed was built following their experience with Orderhive, a SaaS platform that served thousands of merchants and saw a successful exit. According to the company, their work in commerce highlighted persistent inefficiencies in payment systems, particularly around settlement speed and cost, which led to the development of Speed’s Lightning-based infrastructure. Speed said it has processed more than $2.5 billion in Bitcoin payment volume, consisting entirely of real-world transactions such as merchant payments and peer-to-peer transfers. The platform currently supports approximately 1.2 million users and has been growing at a rate of over 100 percent year-over-year. Speed Wallet is among the fastest-growing wallets operating on the Lightning Network, according to the company. Speed’s merchant-facing offering, Speed Merchant, provides an enterprise-grade API and dashboard that enables businesses, creators, and digital platforms to accept Bitcoin and stablecoin payments with instant settlement, low transaction fees, and compliance features. The company cited its integration with Steak ’n Shake as a key milestone. The US-based restaurant chain adopted Lightning payments across multiple customer touchpoints, including point-of-sale systems, kiosks, and mobile platforms. The rollout required deep integration with Acrelec systems and high-availability infrastructure, demonstrating Speed’s ability to operate at enterprise scale, the company said. “Bitcoin and stablecoins have largely remained speculative assets,” said Niraj Patel, Chief Executive Officer of Speed. “We are focused on making them usable for commerce, creators, and global payments. Lightning provides transaction speed, while stablecoins add price stability. Support from Tether and ego death capital reinforces our approach to building efficient payment rails.” Tether said the investment aligns with its broader strategy to expand stablecoin usage within Lightning-based payment infrastructure. “Speed is showing how USDT can be deployed on Lightning at scale,” said a Tether spokesperson. “The company’s focus on adoption, engineering, and compliance positions it well within the evolving digital payments ecosystem.” ego death capital also highlighted Speed’s role in enabling practical Bitcoin adoption. “Speed demonstrates that Bitcoin can be used for real commerce today,” said Preston Pysh, General Partner at ego death capital. Following the funding, Speed plans to expand internationally, enhance its enterprise product suite, scale its compliance infrastructure, and grow its Lightning-based developer and mini-app ecosystem. Learn more at https://www.tryspeed.com/. (No Times Now Journalists are involved in creation of this article.)
