This week on StrictlyVC Download, Circle co-founder Sean Neville joins Alex Gove of StrictlyVC to discuss building banking infrastructure for AI agents. Fresh off Circle’s 450% IPO surge, Sean has raised $18 million from A16z to create Catena Labs, the first fully regulated AI-native financial institution. They explore what “agent-native finance” actually means, how AI agents will soon handle our payments and treasury management, and why the financial world needs new standards and protocols to make this safe and reliable.
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction and background
01:24 - Circle's IPO journey
04:12 - What is agent-native finance?
08:24 - Preventing AI hallucination in financial systems
11:07 - Building with real data and human oversight
13:53 - Building regulatory trust and compliance
16:21 - Competing with traditional financial institutions
19:02 - Creating standards for AI-to-AI payments
21:02 - Why this venture will move faster than Circle
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