Open Standard, the company behind the Open USD (OUSD) stablecoin, has appointed Bridge co-founder Zach Abrams as its full-time CEO.
Abrams announced the move on X, saying he is “leaving Stripe to run Open Standard full time.” He said his experience at Bridge showed that stablecoin adoption remained constrained by the economics and incentives of existing issuers.
“At bridge, we made stablecoins more accessible. but our impact was constrained by issuers’ economics and incentives,” Abrams said. “The world needs better money. we hope to remove these constraints.”
The appointment marks a shift for Open Standard, which launched in June with more than 140 companies backing its Open USD initiative.
Who is Open Standard’s OUSD CEO Abrams
Abrams had been serving as Open Standard’s interim CEO since the project was unveiled in June, while also continuing to lead Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure company acquired by Stripe. He will now shift his focus fully to Open Standard.
Abrams brings significant stablecoin infrastructure experience to the role.
He co-founded Bridge, which built infrastructure for businesses to issue and move stablecoins. Stripe acquired Bridge in 2025 for about $1.1 billion, bringing Abrams into Stripe as part of its broader stablecoin push.
Before Bridge, Abrams held product leadership roles at Square, Coinbase and Brex.
At the June launch of Open USD, Abrams described OUSD as a stablecoin designed for businesses and the internet economy. More than 140 companies initially signed up to participate, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, BlackRock, BNY, Google and Shopify.
Coinbase, Mastercard, Visa to Run OUSD
The leadership change also comes alongside a new company structure. Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa will join Open Standard as its initial founding partners. They will be investing in the company and helping establish the initial supply of OUSD.
The founding partners are also expected to provide more than $1 billion in near-term launch liquidity for the stablecoin, according to Open Standard’s latest X update. The company plans to add a limited number of additional founding partners.
Open Standard, sometimes portrayed as Circle’s challenger, is building its stablecoin OUSD around a different economic model from traditional issuer-led stablecoins.
As per the current model, Businesses will be able to mint and redeem OUSD without fees or artificial volume limits. The participating companies will receive nearly all revenue generated by OUSD’s reserves, after a management fee. The project will also be governed through an independent company with a board made up of participating partners.
That structure has led to OUSD being portrayed as a potential challenger to established stablecoins such as Circle’s USDC and Tether’s USDT. Circle and Tether were notably absent from the original Open Standard consortium.
Open Standard’s model instead gives the businesses helping distribute and use OUSD a direct economic interest in its growth.
The latest company update gives Open Standard a larger institutional backing as it prepares for the OUSD launch later this year.
Sneha Agrawal 
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