Circle announced the acquisition of Interop Labs, the initial development team of Axelar, and its intellectual property, accelerating its cross-chain interoperability deployment.

ME News, December 16 (UTC+8) – According to official news, USDC issuer Circle announced on December 16 that it has signed an agreement to acquire the Interop Labs team and its proprietary intellectual property. The acquisition is expected to be completed in early 2026. Circle looks forward to contributing to the broader interoperability field and continuing to explore opportunities that align with its vision of an open, interconnected, and scalable on-chain economy. Interop Labs has been a core contributor to Axelar, one of the most advanced frameworks in cross-chain communication and token transfer, and has worked with the growing community of open-source contributors to drive Axelar's core development. By directly integrating Interop Labs' talent and technology into Circle, the aim is to accelerate the advancement of two core initiatives: Arc – a blockchain layer designed by Circle for enterprise applications and dedicated to becoming the operating system of the internet economy; and cross-chain transfer protocols. It should be noted that this transaction only involves the Interop Labs team and its proprietary intellectual property. With the team joining Circle, the Axelar network, foundation, and AXL token will continue to operate independently under community governance, and the open-source intellectual property will remain open. Common Prefix, another contributor to the Axelar project, will take over the related work from Interop Labs. (Source: ME)