Catena Labs has closed a $30 million Series A and filed for a national trust bank charter, positioning itself at the intersection of AI-driven autonomous agents and regulated financial infrastructure. The charter filing is the more consequential move: a national trust bank designation would allow Catena to custody assets, settle transactions, and operate across US state lines without a patchwork of state-by-state money-transmission licences.
The company is building what it calls agentic finance — infrastructure that lets AI agents execute financial decisions autonomously, from payments to investment flows, within a compliant, chartered wrapper. The $30 million raise gives it the runway to pursue OCC approval, a process that typically takes 12-24 months and demands significant capital reserves.
For the broader crypto and AI convergence trade, a successful charter would mark one of the…
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