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Catena Labs
Catena Labs is a Boston-based fintech building what it calls the first AI-native financial institution - a regulated bank and governance platform designed for AI agents that autonomously send and receive money. Founded in 2025 by Circle co-founder and USDC co-creator Sean Neville, Catena pairs agent identity, deterministic spending policies, and audit trails with account management and stablecoin, card, ACH and wire payment rails. It also open-sourced the Agent Commerce Kit (ACK), a set of protocols for agent identity and payments built on W3C web standards.
Sean Neville
Sean Neville is the cofounder and CEO of Catena Labs, a Boston startup building what it calls the first fully regulated AI-native financial institution - a bank designed for autonomous AI agents to hold accounts, spend, get paid, and settle in stablecoins. He previously cofounded Circle in 2013 with Jeremy Allaire and served as its president and co-CEO, where he was the architect behind USDC. Catena raised an $18 million seed in May 2025 (led by a16z crypto) and a $30 million Series A in May 2026 (led by Acrew Capital and a16z crypto), and is applying for a national trust bank charter with the OCC.