Circle Co-Founder Sean Neville Takes Catena Labs Out of Stealth with Plans to Build the First AI-Native Financial Institution

Catena Labs today announced its plan to establish the first fully regulated AI-native financial institution (FI) designed to serve the unique needs of the emerging AI economy. As a first step toward their long-term vision, today the company released a new open-source project defining protocols and patterns for agentic commerce. The company also confirmed an $18 million financing round led by a16z crypto, with participation from Breyer Capital, Circle Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, CoinFund, Pillar VC, Stanford Engineering VF, and visionary angels including Tom Brady, Bradley Horowitz, Hamel Husain, Kevin Lin, Peter Mattoon, Sam Palmisano, and Balaji Srinivasan.

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Catena was co-founded by Sean Neville, who previously co-founded Circle Internet Group, Inc., and invented the USDC stablecoin. The company aims to address the shortcomings in legacy financial systems that make them poorly suited to the needs of AI agents and agentic commerce. These challenges include the inability to handle agent identity and trust, slow and expensive payment rails, and a broad lack of capabilities designed for AI commerce.

"AI agents will soon conduct most economic transactions, but today’s financial systems are unprepared and resistant to interactions with automated intelligence," said Sean Neville, CEO and co-founder of Catena Labs. “That’s why we’re building an AI-native financial institution that will give AI agents, and the businesses and consumers they serve, the ability to transact safely and efficiently.”

Catena plans to use the new funding to accelerate the development of their AI-native FI and its underlying technology. Key investors expressed confidence in the company’s approach to enabling the AI economy.

"The rise of AI agents is reshaping what’s possible in online commerce, making it clear that we need a financial layer built specifically for how these systems operate—one that can handle authentication, payments, and trust at scale,” said Chris Dixon, founder and managing partner, a16z crypto. “Sean and the Catena team have the expertise to meet that challenge. They’re building financial infrastructure that agentic commerce can depend on, and we’re excited to support their vision."

“I’ve been very fortunate to have worked closely with Sean since co-leading Circle’s Series A in 2013 and have seen firsthand his rare combination of deep expertise in payments, fintech, AI, and stablecoins. He’s uniquely qualified to lead the creation of the first AI-native bank,” said Jim Breyer, founder and CEO of Breyer Capital. “Integrating AI into commerce demands a rebuild of financial infrastructure. Legacy systems cannot always keep up — and that’s why Catena is so compelling.”

As Catena works toward its vision for AI financial services, the company is building upon protocols, patterns, emerging standards, and open source components to address new requirements AI agents create for identity and payments. Today, the company released the open source Agent Commerce Kit (ACK), which defines several of these open source building blocks. The company is building on ACK and other emerging standards to offer a broad suite of licensed financial services addressing new risk, security, and compliance challenges that arise from AI systems working as independent economic actors.

“Today’s financial infrastructure creates significant friction for AI agents, with slow, fragile, and expensive legacy payment rails constraining the potential for AI commerce,” said Matt Venables, CTO and co-founder of Catena Labs. “While we are integrating existing payment networks as we bridge into the future, we’re focused on transforming how money moves in the AI economy by using regulated stablecoins that offer near-instant settlement, minimal transaction costs, and easy integration with AI workflows.”

About Catena Labs

Catena Labs is building a regulated financial institution designed for the AI era. The company is developing new financial infrastructure and services to enable AI agents, businesses, and consumers to participate safely and efficiently in the growing AI-driven economy. Catena is actively seeking collaboration with developers, businesses, and partners involved in the AI space.

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