What is Catena?
A plain language explanation of Catena Labs and why AI-native finance matters.
Catena is a company building the future of finance for AI.
Catena Labs is creating financial systems that are designed for artificial intelligence, not just for humans. This is called AI native finance.
Today’s banks, payments, and financial rules were built for people:
- People open accounts
- People sign contracts
- People move money
But in the future, AI systems will also work, earn, pay, and make decisions. Catena exists to make that possible safely, legally, and at scale.
Right now:
- An AI cannot legally own money
- An AI cannot open a bank account
- An AI cannot pay another AI
- An AI cannot sign contracts or be held accountable
So even if an AI is very smart, it still depends on humans to handle money.
This creates problems:
- Everything is slow
- Everything needs human approval
- AI cannot act independently
- Responsibility is unclear when something goes wrong
The world is moving faster than our financial systems.
Catena is building financial infrastructure that treats AI as a real economic actor.
That means creating systems where:
- AI can earn money
- AI can spend money
- AI can pay other AIs
- AI actions are tracked and controlled
- Humans still stay in charge
Think of Catena as the financial layer that lets AI participate in the economy.
AI native finance means: finance that is designed from the start to work with AI systems.
- Not adding AI on top of old banks
- Not using AI just for chat or analytics
Instead:
- AI is part of how money moves
- AI is part of how decisions are made
- AI is part of how rules are enforced
Just like mobile native apps were built for phones, AI native finance is built for intelligent systems.
Imagine:
- An AI runs a delivery service
- It hires other AIs for routing, customer support, and payments
- It earns money from customers
- It pays its workers instantly
- It follows spending limits set by humans
Today → impossible
With Catena → possible
AI is already:
- Writing code
- Managing workflows
- Running businesses
- Making decisions
The next step is economic autonomy. Without AI native finance:
- AI remains limited
- Humans become bottlenecks
- Systems don’t scale
With Catena:
- AI can operate responsibly
- Money flows faster
- Systems scale globally
- Control and safety are built in
Catena is not:
- A normal bank
- A crypto hype project
- A chatbot company
- A trading app
Catena is infrastructure, the kind that quietly powers everything else.
