MoonPay, the leading global crypto payments network, announced the acquisition of Dawn Labs, an applied research lab focused on artificial intelligence and financial markets, and the launch of Dawn CLI, an AI-native technology tool for trading. The move reflects MoonPay’s broader push to build AI-native infrastructure for financial services.
Prediction markets are one of the fastest-growing categories, attracting a new generation of active traders across platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. These traders use signals from social media, automated strategies and cross-platform positioning, but the infrastructure required for high performance remains fragmented, manual and technically demanding.
Building and deploying a trading strategy has traditionally required expertise across research, software development and portfolio management. Dawn CLI is designed to simplify that process. Users describe a strategy in plain English, and Dawn CLI converts it into executable code, conducts automated user research and simulation, and executes user-directed trades autonomously on supported trading venues.
Dawn Labs was founded in 2025 by Neeraj Prasad. He studied Computer Science and Engineering at MIT, where he conducted machine learning research in the university’s neuroscience labs. Before founding Dawn, Neeraj held engineering roles at Waymo, Microsoft, Citadel, and Reservoir Labs, spanning perception systems for autonomous vehicles, machine learning infrastructure, quantitative trading, and deep learning compilers. The acquisition brings Neeraj and the full Dawn team into MoonPay to advance its AI-native infrastructure strategy. Neeraj will serve as Chief Engineer of MoonPay Labs.
From Strategy to Execution
- Dawn CLI manages the full trading lifecycle:
- Natural language input: Users describe a strategy in plain English
- Automated user research: The platform surfaces relevant data and market signals for the user to evaluate a strategy
- Code generation and backtesting: Trading strategy code is generated and stress-tested automatically
- Autonomous execution: Trades are executed continuously as directed by the user
“The team at Dawn Labs have made the most complex parts of active trading accessible to anyone with an idea,” said Ivan Soto-Wright, CEO and Founder of MoonPay. “With Dawn, traders can direct AI agents to develop and execute sophisticated trading 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. “Competing effectively has required expertise across multiple disciplines at once. Dawn brings those capabilities into a single autonomous system. Joining MoonPay allows us to scale that system to a broader audience.”
MoonPay’s Commitment to AI-Native Infrastructure
This acquisition is the latest step in MoonPay’s evolution toward AI-native infrastructure. Over the past year, the company has moved from on-ramp APIs to MoonPay CLI, MoonPay Agents with Ledger-secured hardware signing, and MoonAgents Card – a virtual Mastercard debit card that lets users and AI agents spend stablecoins directly from onchain balances anywhere Mastercard is accepted online. Each step has given AI agents more direct, programmable access to the financial layer. The launch of the Open Wallet Standard extended that infrastructure to every agent, every framework, and every chain. Dawn CLI represents the next step in that progression.
