On May 20, Circle co-founder Sean Neville announced that his new project, Catena Labs, successfully completed a $18 million seed round of financing.
The round was led by a16z Crypto, followed by Breyer Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and his former company Circle Ventures, along with investment from football star Tom Brady.
Chris Dixon, founder and managing partner of a16z crypto, said: Sean Neville and the Catena team have the expertise to address this challenge. They are building financial infrastructure that agents can rely on, and we are pleased to support their vision.
Is AI also going to open a bank?
Catena Labs is a fintech startup that wants to "build an AI bank from scratch", focusing on providing dedicated financial infrastructure for AI agents, such as intelligent payments, identity verification, and low-cost settlement. The company plans to establish the first fully regulated AI-native financial institution.
Traditional payment rails assume that each transaction has a human on one end, which means delays like 3-day ACH transfers and high credit card payment fees (up to 3%).
Currently, traditional financial systems are still in the "human serving human" stage, with systems marking automated activities as fraud and forcing manual review. This slows down innovation and limits the actual functionality of AI agents.
What Catena wants to do is "AI serving AI", allowing your AI assistant to directly help you open accounts, transfer funds, manage finances, and even do business with other AIs. Software agents should be able to pay and get paid instantly and securely.
It is in the AI + fintech track, focusing on AI-driven financial services and decentralized identity, an area currently being pursued aggressively by major capital.
From USDC to AI Bank, Circle Founder's Second Move
Catena Labs was founded by Circle co-founder Sean Neville, initially established in 2021 to explore AI and decentralized identity, and formally focused on building an "AI-native financial system" in 2023.
Neville was an Adobe engineer and co-founder of Circle Internet Group, Inc., leading the design and development of USDC. In April 2025, Circle submitted an IPO application with a valuation of around $5 billion.
Neville left Circle's operational role in early 2020 but remained on the Circle board. After leaving Circle, he began researching AI and firmly believed we are entering an AI-native network era, which became the foundational concept of Catena Labs.
In 2021, Neville and Matt Venables (Catena Labs co-founder and CTO) established a technology experimental studio to explore emerging technologies like AI and decentralized identity, from which Catena Labs originated.
Currently, Catena Labs has only 9 members from world-class teams at Meta, Google, Jump Crypto, and Protocol Labs. Their website allows direct resume submissions, indicating the team is actively recruiting talent globally.
Catena Labs has developed an open-source protocol to make AI a user's "bank representative". The company explicitly states they will not issue cryptocurrencies or stablecoins, but investors will receive equity with token warrant attachments.
Rebuilding the Financial System with AI
Breyer Capital founder and CEO Jim Breyer said, "Neville is the only one qualified to lead the creation of the first AI-native bank. Integrating AI into business requires rebuilding financial infrastructure. Legacy systems do not always keep up, which is why Catena is so compelling."
Neville predicts that future financial transactions will be entirely executed by AI agents. The project also hopes that AI will not just chat or draw, but truly be able to "earn, spend, and manage finances", becoming an independent economic participant.
Catena Labs has not yet issued tokens or launched a product, but they have open-sourced the Agent Commerce Kit (ACK), a financial protocol framework built specifically for AI, focusing on two key aspects - identity verification and automatic payments for AI agents.
Catena Labs aims to solve the various unfriendly aspects of traditional finance towards AI - slow payments, high costs, and poor automation adaptability. ACK is their first step: using stablecoins for fast settlement, using standardized protocols for identity verification, ultimately allowing AI to have its own "bank account" and "financial services" like humans.
Currently, they have not announced specific product plans, only saying they will open up to developers and enterprises through APIs in the future, building a new AI-driven financial ecosystem. Although still in R&D, the direction of the ACK framework suggests their goal is to rewrite the underlying logic of the entire financial system with AI.
Summary
Catena Labs is a highly promising early-stage project at the intersection of AI and fintech. Founders Sean Neville and Matt Venables, leveraging their successful experience with Circle and USDC, lead a lean team of just 9 people and have completed an $18 million seed round led by a16z.
Their AI-native vision, open-source protocol (ACK), and flexible stablecoin integration demonstrate industry foresight. Although no specific product has been launched yet, their strong financing background and industry support give them significant competitiveness in AI-driven finance.
In the future, Catena Labs' development will depend on its product implementation speed and ecosystem building effectiveness.
