Circle Co-Founder Unveils AI-Native Financial Platform With Backing From a16z

Sean Neville, co-founder of Circle and current CEO of Catena Labs, has launched a bold new venture aimed at building a financial system built specifically for the age of artificial intelligence.

Catena Labs, the company behind the initiative, announced on May 20 that it had raised $18 million in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto division. The goal? Create a fully regulated financial institution where AI agents operate alongside humans in a system optimized for both speed and trust.

Neville believes the current financial architecture is ill-equipped for a future where AI will drive the majority of economic activity. Traditional rails, he says, are too rigid, costly, and slow to accommodate AI-powered agents conducting real-time transactions across global markets.

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To address this, Catena Labs is building a system where AI can act as financial participants using “AI-native” money like stablecoins—specifically highlighting USDC for its low-cost, instant transaction capabilities.

The firm also released its first major open-source tool, the Agent Commerce Kit (ACK), a framework designed to verify agent identity and support secure transactions between humans and AI.

The project is rooted in a future where digital agents don’t just assist humans—they execute commerce on their behalf, powered by money that moves at machine speed.