t54 Labs raises $5M seed round led by Franklin Templeton and Ripple to build trust infrastructure for AI agents operating in financial markets.
AI agents are already executing financial transactions. They are unverified. Nobody is held accountable when things go wrong. That gap is exactly what San Francisco-based t54 Labs is building to close.
The company announced a $5 million seed round on February 25, 2026. The round was led by Anagram, PL Capital, and Franklin Templeton. Ripple came in as a strategic investor alongside Virtuals Ventures, Blockchain Coinvestors, and ABCDE.
As t54ai posted on X, “AI agents are already moving money, unverified and unaccountable. Today, we’re announcing our $5M seed round to build the trust layer for the agentic economy.”
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What Does t54 Actually Build?
t54’s platform covers four areas: agent identity verification, real-time risk assessment, credit underwriting, and a unified settlement layer. The company calls its identity product KYA, or Know Your Agent. It handles developer verification, model provenance, and intent attestation. Businesses can delegate to agents without losing compliance oversight.
The risk engine runs in real time. It reads behavioral patterns, code audits, and device context to catch anomalies before they become problems.
t54’s founder, Chandler Fang, put it plainly in the official announcement: “Financial systems were designed around human identity and human decision-making. As agents become autonomous participants, we need agent-native financial primitives, verifiable agent identity, real-time risk assessment, and programmable accountability, built for how agents operate.”
The credit product underwrites agent-native credit lines. It pulls from identity scores, behavioral data, and transaction history. The company says this brings liquidity into the agent economy without the traditional underwriting model built for humans.
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Franklin Templeton and Ripple Are Both In
Franklin Templeton’s Tony Pecore, SVP and Director of Digital Asset Management, said in the announcement that “the infrastructure layer must evolve to match” as institutions move into tokenization and autonomous systems. He described t54 as building the verification framework institutional finance will require as AI agents become market participants.
Ripple’s Markus Infanger, SVP of RippleX, said autonomous systems are becoming economic actors, not just tools. The financial infrastructure supporting them needs to catch up. Ripple’s investment comes at a time when XRP-based rails are already part of t54’s product stack. The company’s XRPL x402 Facilitator lets AI agents pay for services using $XRP and $RLUSD.
A YouGov study found that 42% of US consumers would allow an AI agent to make purchases for them if it guaranteed the lowest price. That number tells the whole story about demand. But research from Keyfactor found that 86% of cybersecurity professionals believe autonomous systems should carry unique, dynamic digital identities. Without that infrastructure, the gap between consumer appetite and institutional trust stays wide open.
Ecosystems and What Comes Next
t54 runs across XRPL, Solana, Base, and the Virtuals ecosystem. Its open-source SDK called x402-secure adds a security layer on top of the HTTP 402 payment standard. The Claw Credit product uses verified identity and risk scores to build trust and open credit access for agents.
The $5 million will go toward engineering hires, product development, and institutional partnerships. The company was founded in 2025 and is headquartered in San Francisco.
AI agents operating without accountability in financial markets were never going to be a sustainable arrangement. t54 is betting $5M that the market is ready to fix that now.
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