On May 20, Circle co-founder Sean Neville announced that his new project Catena Labs has successfully completed a $18 million seed round financing.

This round of financing is led by a16z Crypto, followed closely by Breyer Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and former employer Circle Ventures, 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 tackle this challenge. They are building the financial infrastructure that agency businesses can rely on, and we are excited to support their vision.

Does AI also need to open a bank?

Catena Labs is a fintech startup that aims to “build an AI bank from scratch,” focusing on providing dedicated financial infrastructure for AI agents, such as smart payments, identity verification, and low-cost settlements. The company plans to establish the first fully regulated AI-native financial institution.

Traditional payment rails assume that there is a person on one end of each transaction, which results in delays such as 3-day ACH transfers and high fees for credit card payments (up to 3%).

All of the current traditional financial systems are still in the stage of “people serving people”, and the system also flags automated activities as fraud, forcing human review. This slows down innovation and limits the actual capabilities of AI agents.

What Catena aims to do is “AI serves AI”, allowing your AI assistant to directly help you open accounts, transfer money, manage finances, and even negotiate business with other AIs. Software agents should be able to pay and receive compensation instantly and securely.

The track it is in is AI + Fintech, focusing on AI-driven financial services and decentralized identity, a field currently being fiercely pursued by large capital.

From USDC to AI Bank, Circle Founder Takes a Second Shot

Catena Labs was founded by Sean Neville, co-founder of Circle, initially established in 2021 with a focus on exploring AI and decentralized identity, and officially shifted its focus in 2023 to building an “AI-native financial system.”

Neville was an engineer at Adobe and a co-founder of Circle Internet Group, Inc., where he led the design and development of USDC. In April 2025, Circle submitted its IPO application with a valuation of approximately $5 billion.

Neville left his operational role at Circle in early 2020 but remains a member of the Circle board. After leaving Circle, he began to focus on AI and firmly believes that we are entering an AI-native internet era, which has also become the foundational philosophy of Catena Labs.

In 2021, Neville co-founded a tech experimentation studio with Matt Venables (co-founder and CTO of Catena Labs) to explore emerging technologies such as AI and decentralized identity, which is the origin of Catena Labs.

Currently, Catena Labs has only 9 members, all from world-class teams at Meta, Google, Jump Crypto, and Protocol Labs. Their official website allows for direct resume submissions, indicating that the team is actively recruiting talent from around the world.

Currently, Catena Labs has developed an open-source protocol that allows AI to act as a “bank representative” for users. The company has made it clear that it will not issue cryptocurrencies or stablecoins for the time being, but investors will receive equity with attached token warrants.

Reinstall the financial system with AI

Jim Breyer, founder and CEO of Breyer Capital, said, “Neville is the only one qualified to lead the creation of the first AI-native bank, and integrating AI into business requires rebuilding the financial infrastructure. Legacy systems do not always keep up, which is why Catena is so compelling.”

And Neville predicts that future financial transactions will be entirely executed by AI agents. The project team also hopes that in the future, AI will not only be able to chat and draw, but truly be able to “make money, spend money, and manage finances,” becoming an independent economic entity participant.

Catena Labs has not issued a token or launched a product yet, but they have just open-sourced the Agent Commerce Kit (ACK), which is a financial protocol framework designed specifically for AI, focusing on two key aspects - identity verification for AI agents and automated payments.

Catena Labs aims to address the various unfriendly aspects of traditional finance towards AI – slow payments, high costs, and lack of automation compatibility. ACK is their first step: using stablecoins for fast settlement and standardized protocols for identity verification, ultimately enabling AI to have its own “bank account” and “financial services” just like humans.

Currently, they have not announced specific product plans, only stating that they will provide access to developers and enterprises in the future through APIs and other methods, to build a new AI-driven financial ecosystem. Although it is still under development, judging from the direction of the ACK framework, their goal is to rewrite the underlying logic of the entire financial system using AI.

Summary

Catena Labs is a highly promising early-stage project situated at the intersection of AI and fintech. Founders Sean Neville and Matt Venables, leveraging their successful experience at Circle and USDC, have led a lean team of just 9 members to secure a $18 million seed round financing led by a16z.

Its AI-native vision, open-source protocol (ACK), and flexible integration of stablecoins demonstrate industry foresight. Although specific products have not yet been launched, its strong financing background and industry support give it significant competitiveness in the AI-driven financial sector.

In the future, the development of Catena Labs will depend on the speed of its product implementation and the effectiveness of its ecosystem construction.

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