Circle Co-Founder’s Catena Labs Raises $30 Million to Bet on AI Agent Finance

Catena Labs, founded by Circle co-founder and USDC co-creator Sean Neville, is positioning itself as an “AI-native bank” for AI agents. As autonomous software begins making payments and managing funds on people’s behalf, identity verification, permission controls and audit trails are emerging as new challenges for financial infrastructure. Catena aims to govern agent transactions through policies set by humans.

Catena Labs announced a $30 million Series A funding round on May 20, 2026, co-led by a16z crypto and Acrew Capital, bringing its total funding to $48 million. The company said the same day that it had applied to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank charter. If approved, the charter would allow Catena to safeguard customer funds and process payments by AI agents within a regulated framework.