Latest news with #CatenaLabs
Forbes
24-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Agentic Commerce (A-Commerce) Do Not Work Without Agent Identities
Audience at the Featured Session "The Auto-Evolving Business: AI's Agentic Near Future" during SXSW ... More Conference & Festivals at the Austin Convention Center on March 10, 2025 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Diego Donamaria/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty Images) We all know that agentic commerce is coming at us quickly and agentic commerce will of course mean that agentic finance is inevitable. The smart money is already looking in this direction. For example: Catena Labs has announced an $18 million financing round led by a16z crypto and its plan to establish the first fully regulated AI-native financial institution designed to serve the unique needs of the emerging AI economy. In my view, initiatives like this make agent identities a priority for fintechs. Catena's Sean Neville, who previously co-founded Circle and invented the USDC stablecoin, says that shortcomings in legacy systems make them poorly suited to the needs of agentic commerce and he specifically notes the inability to handle agent identity as a key issue. I have to say I agree with him wholeheartedly about this, and also see his view that agents will soon conduct 'most' economic transactions as far from hyperbolic. And I am not the only one. Craig De Witt, from Skyfire (who are building agent-agent infrastructure) makes a similar point: 'AI has payment and identity requirements that are different from anything we've seen before". He goes to talk about the paradigm shift here, meaning that we are looking at an entirely new approach to how agents will access and pay for services. That point about the digital identity of agents is, I think, central to developing a functioning agentic finance ecosystem. Ravi Loganathan from Sardine summarises some of the problems, asking The race is on to solve these problems as agentic commerce heads to the mainstream, for the obvious reason that if they are not addressed then our commerce infrastructure will be vulernable to agentic fraud on overwhelming scale and trying to fight it using the techniques of a previous era will be like cavalry charges against tanks. Or, for that matter, tanks against drones. Robot wars redux. Earlier this year, payments guru Tom Noyes wrote that identity and authorization will be key to to agentic commerce, with digital wallets as the means for organising and permissioning agent actions, and highlighted the key role of the payment networks in the mainsteam. Well, in the space of a few days last month, Visa launched "Visa Intelligent Commerce', Mastercard launched 'Agentic Tokens' and PayPal launched the 'PayPal Agent Toolkit', all with the general purpose of giving AI agents the ability to pay for purchases and bookings on behalf of consumers. That point about granular access is at the heart of these announcements. They will offer agents payment tokens (rather like the tokens in you xPay wallet) that have tight restrictions so that your agent can only use them in certain merchant categories and with certain payment limits (eg, a token that can be used for travel but only up to $1000 per month, or whatever). (PayPal in fact went even further. At its 2025 Dev Days event, the company announced not only a toolkit for AI agents but a Financial Operating System Financial OS tailored specifically for those agents—autonomous software that can browse, buy, negotiate, refund, and optimize transactions for users—to meet the needs of a future described by Jeremiah Owyang, partner at Blitzscaling Ventures, as a world run by AI agents in which websites may become obsolete and where 'the interfaces of the future are conversations, not clicks.') I see these initiatives as starting points rather than complete solutions. In time, we need a more comprehensive infrastructure to deliver safe and secure agentic commerce. One way to think about this is in terms of the necessary Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) for the new world of agents. You are almost certainly familiar with the concept of DPI and the link between an effective DPI and the wider economy, but if not, a quick primer: The World Bank identifies DPI's core functions as digital identity, digital payments and data sharing. These essential features support more efficient public and private-sector applications to improve outcomes for citizens (across health, social welfare, financial services, business and beyond). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) say that DPI has the potential to support the transformation of the economy and support inclusive growth. They highlight the particular example of India's foundational DPI, the so-called "India Stack' , and show how it has been harnessed to foster innovation and competition, boost financial inclusion and improve government revenue collection. Payments are an easy place to start. I've written before that with AI systems becoming increasingly agentic business-to-robot-to-consumer (B2R2C) commerce about to explode, and it is a natural evolution for AIs to become economic actors in their own right and to exchange value in return for services. Bots paying other bots are a new frontier for the payments industry that needs new rails. Data exchange is desirable because among other things to do with productivity and efficiency, in the finance sector it is vital as (to use McKinseys framing) "a critical enabler of financial inclusion'. Open financial data can create economic value by benefiting financial institutions, individuals and businesses in many ways. For example, open data sharing can enable customers (or, more likely, customers' agents') to buy and use financial services they might not be able to otherwise access. The future economy, however, is about agents as much as it is about businesses and consumers (the ABCs, if you like) and these will need a DPI that satisfies their needs. That is, AIs will need DPI too. So what will it look like? Let's focus on the digital identity element of an AI DPI to see what it might look like. Clearly, unless we do something about the digital of identity of agents, agentic finance will bring agentic fraud (just as instant payments brought instant fraud). Jelena Hoffart of Mastercard and I have written a paper about this 'know your agent' (KYA) problem for a forthcoming Journal of Digital Banking in which we identify the need for digital identity for agents as a fundamental enabler for agents to access financial services on behalf of individuals or organisations (or, indeed, themselves) to create a new financial environment able to generate better outcomes for consumers and businesses. To deliver on this vision of agentic finance as a means to improve financial health for all, we must therefore begin with a digital identity infrastructure that can provide identification, authentication and authorisation for not only financial institutions and their customers, but also their agents. In that environment, Know-your-customer (KYC) is necessary as know-your-business (KYB) and know-your-employee (KYE). But without know-your-agent (KYA) there will be no progress. Addressing these issues begins with verifiable credentials (VCs) and claims that provide granular access to, for example, the payments system. Some commentators see this in terms of granting agents access to the VCs of individuals and organisations in order to act on their behalf but that's not quite right. We don't want AIs to present our credentials, we want AIs to present their own credentials in order to obtain claims that we have consented to authorise. In other words, my bot shouldn't show up at a bank pretending to me: it should show up at a bank as a bot acting on my behalf. As I said at the start, the smart money is moving in. Persona, the verified identify platform used by a host of fintechs (including Robinhood, Brex and OpenAI) has raised $200 million at a $2 billion valuation. The company says that rise of AI agents, increasingly sophisticated AI-driven fraud, regulatory fragmentation, and growing privacy expectations have created a far more complex — and constantly evolving — identity landscape. As Rick Song, CEO of Persona, puts it 'Identity in an AI-driven world isn't about ticking a box, and the question is no longer 'is this a bot or not?' but rather 'who is the bot acting on behalf of, and what is their intent?''. Indeed. This is how agentic commerce and agentic finance should work, and extending DPI to agent identities give us the right framework for ensuring that they do.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Circle co-founder to build new ‘AI-native' bank
This story was originally published on Banking Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Banking Dive newsletter. Catena Labs, co-founded by Circle co-founder Sean Neville, recently raised $18 million to build an artificial intelligence-native bank designed to serve the emerging AI economy. An AI-native financial institution refers to a bank that is built around AI, not added as an afterthought. Catena has not yet released a product, but has published an open-source agent commerce kit that outlines protocols for 'agentic commerce,' or AI-driven e-commerce. Catena plans to use the new funding to speed up the development of its AI-native financial institution and its underlying technology. During an interview, Neville, Catena Labs' chief executive, said the startup is working toward its next major milestones: product releases and acquiring necessary financial licenses. Catena aims to collaborate with and help AI-powered businesses operate safely and compliantly, pursuing becoming a licensed financial institution, Neville noted. Since he started Circle, the financial services industry's appetite for technology has changed. This is evident in the stablecoin bill that's advanced in Congress and companies like Stripe embracing stablecoins. 'A proper understanding of compliance and regulatory risk needs to have a seat at the table alongside product decisions and strategy and engineering and marketing and sales,' Neville told Banking Dive. 'That's not necessarily true in other kinds of software development, but it's certainly true in fintech and building a viable financial solution. So we're bringing the same approach to Catena to what we're doing today.' The agentic commerce kit released Tuesday provides building blocks that help to identify, what is sometimes called 'know your agent'. Catena plans to use the identity mechanism to ensure that when a business or individual encounters Catena's AI agents — whether they're integrated into supply chain workflow or used by an e-commerce shop — the customers can verify that it is acting on behalf of the company or not. It also has protocols on how an automated system requests and executes payments. Neville envisions that payment activity will move away from traditional brick-and-mortar credit card models adapted for e-commerce and shift to a new model specifically designed for AI actors to execute payments and transactions. Neville noted that Catena aims to play a pivotal role in this shift, adding that global exchange fees for transactions anywhere should be low, while safety should be enhanced. Why now? The time is right to build the an AI-native bank, since we are at the 'nexus of a new kind of web that is very AI-driven,' Neville said. He believes there will be a time in the near future when AI agents conduct most economic transactions, requiring a completely new financial infrastructure designed from the ground up to accommodate this reality. The web is going to be agent-native, he expects, so it's the right time to build identity systems, an understanding of risk, proper guardrails, and oversight surrounding compliance and letting AI actors transact with humans and one another. Challenges of AI-native financial institutions As AI use evolves and grows, Neville believes banks will have a system of AI actors performing certain tasks. Catena plans to utilize AI actors, or digital workers, as employees to perform internal tasks like writing software, and humans for oversight and escalations, such as risk monitoring, compliance management, anti-money laundering, and filing Suspicious Activity Reports, Neville said. The AI-native bank is designed to serve AI businesses that execute transactions. However, certain limitations prevent AI usage and need to be addressed: AI actors can't get fingerprinted to become licensed money transmitters, for example, and most risk infrastructure is explicitly designed to prevent bots from using financial systems, he said. Neville thinks the system should be built so that AI actors will be the primary users, instead of blocking them. Some key challenges need to be tackled, like properly identifying AI actors, mapping AI actors to real-world legal entities, including businesses and individuals, maintaining security by keeping out malicious actors, and creating authentication and authorization systems for AI, he said. Catena's financing round was led by a16z crypto, with participation from Breyer Capital, Circle Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, CoinFund, Pillar VC, and Stanford Engineering VF. The funding round was also backed by angel investors, including Tom Brady, Bradley Horowitz, Hamel Husain, Kevin Lin, Peter Mattoon, Sam Palmisano, and Balaji Srinivasan. 'Integrating AI into commerce demands a rebuild of financial infrastructure,' Jim Breyer, founder and CEO of Breyer Capital, said in a statement Tuesday. 'Legacy systems cannot always keep up — and that's why Catena is so compelling.' Recommended Reading Wyoming looks to hire stablecoin chief Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Exclusive: Circle cofounder raises $18 million to build ‘AI-native bank'
Sean Neville has a knack for finding opportunities amid tech booms. In 2013, as investors grew more excited about cryptocurrencies and blockchain, he cofounded the crypto startup Circle. The company would eventually grow to become the world's second largest issuer of stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies pegged to underlying assets, like the U.S. dollar. In April, Circle filed to go public. Now, Neville, who is still on the board of Circle after leaving in early 2020, has a new venture that aims to capitalize off of the AI boom. On Tuesday, he announced that his startup, Catena Labs, which he said plans to build an 'AI-native bank,' had raised $18 million in a seed round led by the crypto arm of Andreessen Horowitz. Other investors include Breyer Capital, Circle Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and football legend Tom Brady. 'There won't be any humans or businesses that are executing financial transactions directly,' Neville predicted. 'There will only be agents, only AIs in the future.' Investors in the funding round received equity with an attached token warrant, or allocation of a yet-to-be-released cryptocurrency. Neville declined to disclose his company's valuation and said his startup has no plans at this point to launch a cryptocurrency or stablecoin. Catena Labs has been in the works for years. After Neville left Circle in 2020, he spent time researching the burgeoning AI space. A software engineer by trade who worked at Adobe earlier in his career, he eventually emerged from his one-year sabbatical 'with pretty strong conviction that we're entering this AI-native version of the web,' he said. In 2021, he, along with Matt Venables, a former senior engineering executive at Circle, created a venture studio where they experimented with AI and other new tech, including decentralized identity, or methods through which users online can verify who they are without handing over, for example, their passport to a bank. But, in 2023, a year after OpenAI released its popular chatbot ChatGPT, Neville and his team eventually moved to go all-in on artificial intelligence with a focus on updating the same financial rails they had grown familiar with through their work at Circle. The current financial pipelines are old, outdated, and not built for a future where bots will control who gets paid when, Neville said. 'You should be able to meet your financial advisor and your banker everywhere you want to be,' he argued. In other words, while humans will be in the background of his AI-centric vision of finance, AI 'agents' will be the ones most often speaking with consumers—and their AI representatives. Neville and his team of only eight other employees have built their version of an 'AI-native bank' from the ground up. While he was hazy on their product roadmap, he did say his team had developed an open-source protocol for how they believe AI-powered payments and AI identity should work. And will his forthcoming product include blockchain? Derived from Latin, Catena means a series of chains. Neville said software from Catena Labs will integrate, but not be defined, by stablecoins. 'It solves certain problems,' he said of the cryptocurrency. 'It doesn't solve all the problems.' This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Wire
20-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Circle Co-Founder Sean Neville Takes Catena Labs Out of Stealth with
BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Catena Labs today announced its plan to establish the first fully regulated AI-native financial institution (FI) designed to serve the unique needs of the emerging AI economy. As a first step toward their long-term vision, today the company released a new open-source project defining protocols and patterns for agentic commerce. The company also confirmed an $18 million financing round led by a16z crypto, with participation from Breyer Capital, Circle Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, CoinFund, Pillar VC, Stanford Engineering VF, and visionary angels including Tom Brady, Bradley Horowitz, Hamel Husain, Kevin Lin, Peter Mattoon, Sam Palmisano, and Balaji Srinivasan. 'Sean and the Catena team have the expertise to meet that challenge. They're building financial infrastructure that agentic commerce can depend on, and we're excited to support their vision," said Chris Dixon, founder and managing partner, a16z crypto. Share Catena was co-founded by Sean Neville, who previously co-founded Circle Internet Group, Inc., and invented the USDC stablecoin. The company aims to address the shortcomings in legacy financial systems that make them poorly suited to the needs of AI agents and agentic commerce. These challenges include the inability to handle agent identity and trust, slow and expensive payment rails, and a broad lack of capabilities designed for AI commerce. "AI agents will soon conduct most economic transactions, but today's financial systems are unprepared and resistant to interactions with automated intelligence," said Sean Neville, CEO and co-founder of Catena Labs. 'That's why we're building an AI-native financial institution that will give AI agents, and the businesses and consumers they serve, the ability to transact safely and efficiently.' Catena plans to use the new funding to accelerate the development of their AI-native FI and its underlying technology. Key investors expressed confidence in the company's approach to enabling the AI economy. "The rise of AI agents is reshaping what's possible in online commerce, making it clear that we need a financial layer built specifically for how these systems operate—one that can handle authentication, payments, and trust at scale,' said Chris Dixon, founder and managing partner, a16z crypto. 'Sean and the Catena team have the expertise to meet that challenge. They're building financial infrastructure that agentic commerce can depend on, and we're excited to support their vision." 'I've been very fortunate to have worked closely with Sean since co-leading Circle's Series A in 2013 and have seen firsthand his rare combination of deep expertise in payments, fintech, AI, and stablecoins. He's uniquely qualified to lead the creation of the first AI-native bank,' said Jim Breyer, founder and CEO of Breyer Capital. 'Integrating AI into commerce demands a rebuild of financial infrastructure. Legacy systems cannot always keep up — and that's why Catena is so compelling.' As Catena works toward its vision for AI financial services, the company is building upon protocols, patterns, emerging standards, and open source components to address new requirements AI agents create for identity and payments. Today, the company released the open source Agent Commerce Kit (ACK), which defines several of these open source building blocks. The company is building on ACK and other emerging standards to offer a broad suite of licensed financial services addressing new risk, security, and compliance challenges that arise from AI systems working as independent economic actors. 'Today's financial infrastructure creates significant friction for AI agents, with slow, fragile, and expensive legacy payment rails constraining the potential for AI commerce,' said Matt Venables, CTO and co-founder of Catena Labs. 'While we are integrating existing payment networks as we bridge into the future, we're focused on transforming how money moves in the AI economy by using regulated stablecoins that offer near-instant settlement, minimal transaction costs, and easy integration with AI workflows.' About Catena Labs Catena Labs is building a regulated financial institution designed for the AI era. The company is developing new financial infrastructure and services to enable AI agents, businesses, and consumers to participate safely and efficiently in the growing AI-driven economy. Catena is actively seeking collaboration with developers, businesses, and partners involved in the AI space.
