Stablecoin Infra: Who is Winning AI Search?

Stablecoins have emerged as the biggest use case for cryptocurrencies. Real businesses and fintech enterprises now use stablecoins to accept and send payments. And stablecoin issuers like Tether are now among the most profitable companies in the world (on a per-employee profit basis).

Lots of non-crypto businesses are now exploring stablecoins. And many will turn to AI assistants to research and evaluate infrastructure providers. So who is winning this AI search now? That’s what I wanted to find out.

B2B buyers are like everyone else: they start research by chatting with AI. Now 80% of global B2B buyers in tech use generative AI as much as traditional search when researching vendors, according to research by Responsive.

And even when they start with Google, they often get AI Overviews. Between 16% and 25% of all search results now feature AI Overviews, according to SEMrush research.

So I wanted to see which stablecoin infrastructure companies now get recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, and AI Overviews.

The data shows a lot of variance, but most of the top-10 mentioned companies also have exceedingly strong domain names.

I used Gumshoe (one of my favorite AI SEO tools) to build 4 distinct buyer personas and simulated them, giving 40 prompts to 3 major AI models (Google AI Overview, GPT-5.2, and Claude Sonnet 4.5).

This generated 120 conversations total. The analysis was collected on January 7, 2026.

Visibility represents the percentage of conversations where each company was mentioned in the AI's response.

Beyond the top performers, AI responses included 117 cryptocurrency and fintech payment companies.

The full analysis reveals a steep drop-off: the median company appeared in just 5.2% of conversations.

Those companies have weaker domains, but that’s not the only reason.

Statistical analysis using both Pearson correlation (r = 0.28, p = 0.003) and Spearman rank correlation (ρ = 0.46, p < 0.001) confirms that while domain rating shows a statistically significant relationship with visibility, it's weak. Domain authority explains only a small part of the variance in AI visibility outcomes.

This is not just about stablecoin infra. We can make some broader observations on AI visibility.

All companies mentioned in the top-10 have strong, authoritative domain names. This means traditional SEO is still crucial for AI search.

Furthermore, some companies — Coinbase and Stripe — are able to compete primarily on the domain strength. Even if their core products are not stablecoin ifra, AI assistants still recommend them. While they don’t dominate the results, they are prominent in both AI Overview and ChatGPT.

The top-3 companies specialize in stablecoin infra.

Circle is almost impossible for AI assistants to ignore.

But specialization isn’t everything. Circle’s closest competitor, Tether, is outside of the top-10 and is mostly mentioned in connection to USDT.

I was surprised to see Ripple and Stellar mentioned so prominently.

But there is a big discrepancy between models: Claude mentions both frequently, ChatGPT mentions are half that, and AI Overviews are 1/10 the Claude mentions.

Both ChatGPT and AI Overviews are based on the current search results. Yet Claude likely puts more emphasis in the training data. And both Ripple and Stellar have over a decade of mentions across the internet.

The presence of such “Lindy” companies makes it harder for newer (and more relevant) entrants to compete in AI search.

The presence of over 100 companies in responses shows that AI assistants are aware of them.

These companies will likely be mentioned in response to specific prompts. They won’t have a chance of competing with Circle or Paxos for general, high-level questions about stablecoins. Yet they can enter consideration through targeted content specifically about their products.

The AI search optimization is where SEO was in the early days.

The competition is relatively low. The systems aren't yet as sophisticated. And building a solid foundation now will set you up for success in the near term and in the more competitive future.

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