Circle Co-Founder Bets on AI-Driven Banks With $18M Agentic Finance Startup

From Stablecoins to AI Banking: Circle Co-Founder’s Next Billion-Dollar Bet on Agentic Finance

Sean Neville, co-founder of Circle and one of the key architects behind the USDC stablecoin, has secured $18 million to build a fully regulated financial institution tailored for autonomous software agents. His Boston-based startup, Catena Labs, aims to create an “AI-native” bank where AI actors—not humans—initiate, negotiate, and settle transactions in real time.

Catena Labs recently emerged from stealth with seed funding led by a16z crypto. Its mission is to build a platform regulated and licensed to support a future where software agents operate as primary financial actors, handling payments and contracts autonomously.

Why Agentic Finance Needs a New Banking Model

Traditional banking systems are built for human speed—think brick-and-mortar assumptions and slow settlement processes. Neville argues that AI-driven commerce demands money that moves at machine speed. When agents are negotiating contracts, performing foreign exchange on the fly, or executing micro-transactions, the current infrastructure falls short.

Catena’s vision addresses this gap by enabling near-instant settlement with ultra-low fees, leveraging regulated stablecoins and new identity protocols that let AI actors authenticate and transact securely.

Building the Infrastructure Before the Bank

Catena is working simultaneously on two fronts:

• Technology: The company has launched the open-source Agent Commerce Kit (ACK), a suite of protocols for identity verification, discovery, and payments among AI agents.
• Regulation: It is actively pursuing money-transmitter and other licenses necessary to settle transactions in regulated stablecoins and eventually offer deposit services.

One major challenge is that AI agents can’t currently be fingerprinted or identified like humans, which complicates licensing. Catena’s solution is to hold licenses itself and develop cryptographic credentials that prove AI agents are authorized to act on behalf of licensed entities. This approach maintains regulatory compliance while enabling agents to transact autonomously.

Addressing Regulatory and Trust Challenges

Two regulatory factors stand out:

• Clarification of federal rules around dollar-backed stablecoins, which Neville expects to improve soon.
• Developing a framework for AI entities to pass “know your customer” (KYC) and anti-money laundering checks without exposing personal data.

Catena proposes cryptographic credentials that tie every agent transaction to a licensed legal entity, creating an auditable trail for regulators without sacrificing agent scalability.

Trust remains the biggest hurdle. The company is investing the first 18 months in data science techniques that help AI agents evaluate each other’s outputs and operate under graduated permissions—similar to how a new employee earns responsibilities over time.

Practical Implications for Finance Professionals

If successful, Catena’s platform could allow merchants, logistics providers, and enterprises to let AI agents handle contract negotiations and payments without human intervention. Each transaction would carry cryptographic proof of authorization.

Catena’s near-term goals include:

• Rolling out additional identity and payment modules for the Agent Commerce Kit.
• Assembling a comprehensive license portfolio to offer insured accounts and cross-border payments.

Establishing open standards for agent discovery and communication will be critical. Neville compares this to the early web before HTTPS, emphasizing that secure protocols for agents are essential to scale agentic finance.

The Road Ahead

Investors are backing Catena’s team for their experience bridging mainstream finance and blockchain. Whether autonomous agents become trusted stewards of money depends on how regulators, enterprises, and users respond.

For finance professionals, this shift signals a need to monitor emerging AI-native financial infrastructure and consider how agentic transactions could reshape payments, risk management, and compliance.

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