Zerohash is nearing a major funding push, seeking roughly $250 million at a $1.5 billion valuation after walking away from takeover talks with Mastercard, according to a person familiar with the matter. The blockchain infrastructure provider recently ended talks over an acquisition by Mastercard, CoinDesk reported, but the payments giant is reportedly still weighing a strategic investment and discussions are ongoing. The size and terms of Zerohash’s potential raise could still shift as those talks continue. The move comes as demand for enterprise-grade crypto plumbing grows — banks, brokerages and fintechs are increasingly building tokenization, stablecoin and on-chain settlement capabilities at scale. A fresh capital injection would position Zerohash to expand its developer tools and API offerings to meet that institutional demand. Zerohash’s latest round would represent a step up from its October financing. In October the firm raised $104 million in a Series D-2 led by Interactive Brokers that valued the company at $1 billion. That round brought in new names including Morgan Stanley, Apollo-managed funds, SoFi, Jump Crypto, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, FTMO, IMC and Liberty City Ventures, alongside existing backers PEAK6, tastytrade and Nyca Partners. Founded in 2017, Zerohash provides APIs and embeddable developer tooling that let financial institutions and fintechs launch crypto, stablecoin and tokenization products. Its platform counts clients such as Interactive Brokers, Stripe, BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, Franklin Templeton and DraftKings, and the company says its services reach more than 5 million users in 190 countries. Zerohash did not respond to requests for comment. Earlier reporting from Fortune said Mastercard had been in late-stage acquisition talks that could have valued Zerohash at up to $2 billion. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news