Cari raises $32.5 million from banks for tokenised deposit network

Cari, a US tokenised deposit network aimed at regional, mid-size, and community banks, has closed a $32.5 million first tranche of its initial funding round, with capital coming entirely from bank investors. Glacier Bank joined the six original design partners, First Horizon Bank, Huntington Bank, KeyBank, M&T Bank, Old National Bank, and SouthState Bank, as participants in the raise. Thirty banks have now joined the network, with a further 40 in active discussions.

The project reached minimum viable product stage at the end of March 2026, and a full product suite covering programmability, wallets, and a portal enabling banks to mint, transfer, and burn tokenised deposits was delivered in July. Cari remains in pre-production, meaning no live settlement activity is yet under way, though the funding and expanding bank roster suggest a production launch is being positioned for the near term.

First Horizon’s chairman, president, and chief executive Bryan Jordan framed the rationale in terms of shared infrastructure reducing the cost and complexity of capabilities that would otherwise be difficult for individual institutions to build independently, while preserving competitive differentiation at the relationship and service layer. That framing is worth noting: it positions Cari not as a disruptor of bank relationships but as a utility sitting beneath them, which may ease adoption conversations with institutions that have historically been cautious about network dependency.