Building the First AI-Native Financial Institution

AI agents are rapidly becoming independent economic actors. But at every turn, legacy financial systems prove unprepared for AI, hindering the growth of the agent economy. At Catena Labs, we're addressing this fundamental economic problem by building the first AI-native financial institution – a regulated entity designed from the ground up for this new era. We recently secured $18 million in financing led by a16zcrypto to advance this vision. As part of our development, we're also sharing some open-source building blocks we're utilizing: the Agent Commerce Kit (ACK), a collection of patterns and emerging protocols that address core challenges with agent identity and payment flows.

AI agents are expanding across the economy, evolving from tools into powerful economic participants—creating value, executing transactions, and making decisions in service of human goals. They represent a reimagining of the internet where consumers and businesses collaborate with intelligent, dynamic, self-planning digital workers active in the economy.

The emergence of autonomous, intelligent systems will transform financial services. Soon, AI agents will negotiate, buy, and sell goods and services on behalf of businesses and consumers. They will find and purchase resources like proprietary content to create new insights, negotiate and sell products to make supply chains more efficient, and go beyond sales outreach to negotiate and close transactions. They will pay humans for providing oversight and expertise, and be paid by humans based on the value they provide. For consumers, agents will search the internet for the best deals and shop on their behalf, optimize their finances, and surface new economic opportunities.

However, today's financial institutions are fundamentally unprepared for the demands of AI-driven commerce. Characterized by slow transactions, high costs, rigid international workflows, and risk frameworks designed for humans, not AI, they simply can't keep up with agents that reason and transact at machine speed.

This isn't merely a technology problem. Agentic systems inevitably create risk and fraud vectors. Businesses need a financial partner that can manage these new threats without obstructing progress. Unfortunately, existing financial institutions are often grounded in outdated processes that won't keep up with AI.

We believe these challenges can be overcome. We're creating an AI-native Financial Institution: purpose-built for AI agents, operated increasingly by AI digital workers alongside essential human collaborators providing oversight, and underpinned by a commitment to pioneering AI-specific risk management and compliance. We plan to offer an array of new financial products purpose-built for AI commerce, ushering in a new era of growth and prosperity. We're dedicated to realizing an AI-driven economy where agents conduct a significant portion of financial transactions safely and efficiently.

Existing payment networks won't disappear overnight. While our agents support them as a bridge, for AI commerce to truly flourish, new infrastructure is essential. We'll transform how money moves in the AI economy using regulated stablecoins — AI-native money — that offer near-instant global settlement, minimal transaction costs, and dynamic programmability. With AI-native money, agents gain superpowers, unlocking entirely new business models and greater prosperity for humans and businesses alike.

To pursue our strategy, as mentioned, we secured an $18 million financing round led by a16zcrypto. We're grateful for the early conviction of Breyer Capital — our earliest supporter — as well as backing from Circle Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Stanford Engineering, Pillar VC, and visionary angels including Tom Brady, Bradley Horowitz, Hamel Husain, Sam Palmisano, and Balaji Srinivasan.

As we work toward our vision for the first AI-native financial institution, we're also sharing the Agent Commerce Kit (ACK). ACK is an open-source initiative identifying patterns, components, and emerging protocols we use for verifiable agent identity, and for payment flows and receipts between agents, humans, and businesses, with integrated human oversight.

We plan to build on ACK and other emerging standards to offer a broad suite of financial services. Our approach will directly address the new fraud, risk, security, and compliance challenges arising from AI systems working as independent economic actors, ensuring businesses and consumers can achieve their financial goals while staying safe.

We're looking forward to working with builders, businesses, and partners who are embracing the opportunities this transformation promises. If you are interested in exploring ACK, building AI-driven financial solutions, or joining our team, please reach out. We'd love to collaborate.

Learn more about our vision and explore open roles at https://catenalabs.com.