Crypto payments firm MoonPay announced the acquisition of Dawn Labs and introduced Dawn CLI, an AI-native trading tool designed to turn plain-language strategy ideas into executable trading systems, extending MoonPay’s shift toward AI-native financial infrastructure.
MoonPay targets AI-driven trading infrastructure
Dawn Labs focuses on artificial intelligence and financial markets, with its technology aimed at simplifying a trading process that has typically required expertise across research, coding, backtesting and portfolio management.
According to the company’s announcement, the deal brings Dawn Labs’ applied research team into MoonPay and launches Dawn CLI, as the firm looks to expand beyond crypto payment rails and build tools that give users and AI agents more direct access to markets.
Dawn CLI allows users to describe a trading strategy in everyday language before converting that instruction into code, testing it through simulations and executing user-directed trades on supported venues, the company said.
Dawn CLI aims to streamline AI-driven trading
MoonPay said it aims to reduce the fragmentation traders face across research, strategy development and execution with the launch of Dawn CLI, bringing those functions into a single AI-driven system designed to move users from market signals to tested strategies and user-directed trades.
MoonPay CEO and founder Ivan Soto-Wright said Dawn Labs had made complex parts of active trading more accessible, adding that the technology lets traders direct AI agents to develop and run sophisticated strategies autonomously.
“We built Dawn to address the fragmentation traders face across research, strategy development and execution,” said Neeraj Prasad, founder of Dawn Labs and chief engineer of MoonPay Labs.
MoonPay pushes across custody, payments, Solana and AI tools
MoonPay has been steadily widening its infrastructure strategy in recent weeks, moving from institutional crypto services to payments, trading and now AI-driven market tools.
On April 29, the company announced the acquisition of crypto infrastructure firm Sodot in a deal valued at $100 million, alongside the launch of MoonPay Institutional.
The unit is aimed at banks, asset managers, trading firms and exchanges, with Sodot’s wallet security and transaction infrastructure forming part of a broader platform for custody, settlement, trading and compliance.
MoonPay followed that on May 1 with the launch of MoonAgents Card, a virtual Mastercard debit card that allows users and AI agents to spend stablecoins from onchain wallets, with payments converted into fiat at checkout.
On May 5, MoonPay acquired Solana-based execution layer DFlow, deepening its push into trading infrastructure before the Dawn Labs deal extended that strategy into AI-native financial tools.