Circle Co-Founder Sean Neville Exits Board — Source: CoinGape Sean Neville exits Circle’s board, effective September 25, after serving as a director since 2016. Catena received preliminary co
USDT Giant Circle has a major board update. Circle co-founder Sean Neville has stepped down from the company’s board. The departure comes as his AI-focused financial infrastructure venture, Catena Labs, moves closer to establishing a federally regulated national trust bank in the U.S.
Neville’s resignation from Circle Internet Group’s board is effective from September 25, according to a regulatory filing. Circle said the resignation was for “personal reasons” and was part of an “orderly process of Board refreshment”. It has also added that it is not related to any disagreement with the company’s operations, policies or practices.
Source: SEC Filings
Neville’s move comes shortly after Catena received preliminary conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish Catena Trust Bank, N.A. on September 18. The OCC lists the decision as Corporate Decision 1392.
Catena filed its application to establish Catena Trust Bank with the OCC in May 2026. The application proposed an uninsured national trust company headquartered in New York, with Neville listed among its organizers.
Circle CEO and co-founder Jeremy Allaire addressed Neville’s departure in an X post, saying that building Circle with Neville had been “one of the great privileges” of his life.
Allaire said Neville’s vision had helped shape Circle from its earliest days. He added that while he would have liked Neville to remain on the board, Catena’s recent progress “deserves his full focus.”
Building Circle with Sean Neville (@psneville) has been one of the great privileges of my life. From our earliest days as co-founders, through his years as an executive and his service on our board, Sean’s vision and commitment have helped shape Circle in ways that will endure.…
— Jeremy Allaire (@jerallaire) September 27, 2026
The transition came alongside Circle CFO Jeremy Fox Green departing too. While Neville did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Allaire’s remarks link the board departure to the progress of Neville’s current venture Catena Labs.
Neville co-founded Circle with Allaire and has remained connected to the company since its early years. He joined Circle’s board in 2016 and continued as a director after moving away from the company’s day-to-day operations. The latest resignation reduces Circle’s board from eight directors to seven.
Sean’s departure also comes as Coinbase recently added former Musk executive Anthony Armstrong to its board, bringing experience spanning Wall Street, AI and government into the crypto exchange’s leadership.
At Catena, Neville is pursuing a different application of financial infrastructure. The project is focused on building banking infrastructure for AI agents and the businesses that deploy them. He has been serving as its CEO since Nov 2022.
Catena says AI agents will increasingly need to make payments, receive money, exchange currencies, earn returns and manage assets. Its platform is designed to combine agent controls, policy enforcement and cryptographic signing with programmable money. Catena also provides the controls needed to keep those transactions within predefined rules,
Catena’s bet is part of a broader crypto industry push to build financial infrastructure for autonomous AI systems. Maelstrom CIO Arthur Hayes has argued in BoF PowerTalk that AI agents could eventually require a currency tied directly to the compute they consume.
The company says that, once fully approved, Catena Trust Bank would provide fiduciary digital-asset custody, investment management and trust services under OCC supervision.
The OCC approval, however, is preliminary and conditional rather than a final authorization to begin banking operations. Catena must satisfy the regulator’s pre-opening requirements before the proposed bank can commence business.
But the approval marks a significant regulatory step for the company as it attempts to build a regulated financial layer for the emerging agentic economy. That includes AI systems that can transact and manage money on behalf of businesses.
For Circle, meanwhile, Neville’s resignation formally ends his tenure as a director nearly 13 years after he co-founded the company.
For Neville, the timing puts his focus increasingly on Catena as it transitions from a financial technology venture toward a proposed federally supervised trust bank built around AI-driven finance.
Circle Co-Founder Sean Neville Exits Board as Catena Secures Conditional OCC Approval originally appeared on CoinGape
