Building the Future of Intelligent Finance: Inside the AI Agents on Arc with USDC Hackathon
Introduction
The world of payments is changing, and builders are leading the charge.
From October 27 to November 9, 2025, 2400+ developers, AI innovators, and on-chain pioneers came together for the AI Agents on Arc with USDC Hackathon, powered by Circle, Arc & NativelyAI, in partnership with Eleven Labs, Cloudflare & AI/ML API & lablab.ai.
Hosted both online and onsite in New York City, the event invited participants to build the next generation of payment systems, where AI interprets intent, and Arc executes it with USDC.
A Vision for AI x Payments
The hackathon challenged participants to explore how AI Agents can bring automation, intelligence, and intent-driven logic to financial transactions. With USDC as Arc's native gas and deterministic sub-second finality, builders could create stable, dollar-denominated experiences that merge AI with on-chain infrastructure.
Participants competed across three thematic tracks:
On-chain Actions
Empowering AI agents to perform trustless, autonomous blockchain interactions.
Payments for Real-World Assets (RWA)
Connecting tokenized assets to seamless, AI-driven payment flows.
Payments for Content
Enabling creators and consumers to transact through smart, intent-aware payment systems.
From Global Builders to NYC Innovators
Onsite participants gathered in New York City, joined by thousands of online builders from around the world. The first week was marked by intensive coding, late-night debugging, and collaborative idea exchange - with mentorship from leading experts in AI, blockchain, and decentralized finance.
"This amazing event showcased the power of community and a global movement. Each of the teams won on its own because they created something that could be a valuable and viable business. I believe in every single project because it was delivered in 100%."
— Paweł Czech, Co-Founder, Natively AI
The energy in New York reached its peak during Pitch Day, where the top teams presented their prototypes live in front of investors, judges, and partners. These builders weren't just competing, they were the first ever to build on Arc, pioneering real use cases on the network from day one. They showcased everything from automated yield agents to creator payment bots and AI-controlled treasuries - all powered by Arc's fast and stable infrastructure.
Highlights and Winners
After two intense weeks of building and collaboration, the judges selected the most promising projects that demonstrated technical excellence, real-world potential, and innovative use of Arc and USDC.
1st Place - Tiba: AI Medical Billing Assistant
Tiba is an AI medical billing platform that streamlines medical coding, claims processing, and payments. It helps providers scan PDF medical documents, extract ICD-10 and CPT codes with AI, and create insurance claims.
2nd Place - Arc Pay
Arc Pay is "Apple Pay for AI Agents". It replaces credit cards and digital cash with a simpler, safer, more secure way for your assistants to pay on the web and to other agents.
3rd Place - SOLRARC: AI Managed USDC Settled Real World Assets
The SOLR-ARC Protocol is a Proof-of-Generation (PoG) verification and settlement protocol (Verification-as-a-Service or VaaS) that automates the entire value chain using AI agents.
Eleven Labs Award - ArcAgent: AI-Powered USDC Payments in WhatsApp
ArcAgent is a conversational AI financial assistant built for WhatsApp, designed to make digital payments as natural as chatting. Powered by Arc and Circle, it enables users to send, receive, and manage USDC transactions directly within a familiar messaging interface.
Other Pitches
Powered by the Arc Ecosystem
Throughout the event, builders had unique access to Arc's developer documentation, SDKs, and APIs; enabling fast, secure prototyping. With USDC as the native gas and deterministic transaction finality, Arc gave participants the infrastructure needed to focus on product logic rather than network complexity.
Combined with Cloudflare Workers AI, access to 100+ tools from AI/ML API, and voice interfaces from Eleven Labs, teams showcased how decentralized systems can evolve into intelligent financial systems - driven by intent, not input.
"Thanks to the teams involved and our partners, it was an amazing event. We're looking forward to seeing how the teams and products built during this hackathon evolve further. We're very excited to host more hackathons with the Natively AI team."
— Corey Cooper, Senior Manager, Developer Relations & Ecosystem Marketing at Circle
Beyond the Hackathon
While the hackathon has concluded, the journey for many of these builders is just beginning. Several teams are already in discussions for continued development & incubation.
This hackathon proved that when AI, stablecoins, and open blockchain infrastructure come together, the future of payments becomes intelligent, seamless, and on-chain.
Looking Ahead
The AI Agents on Arc with USDC Hackathon was a glimpse into the future of autonomous, on-chain finance. By merging AI-driven intent with deterministic blockchain execution, participants built solutions that make payments faster, smarter, and more human.
All 95 submissions from the hackathon are now live; explore them here
Arc, Circle, and our event partners will continue to support these innovators through upcoming hackathons, grants, and developer initiatives.
Be sure to join the new community platform to connect with the Arc team and ecosystem, discover upcoming events, and explore developer resources: community.arc.network
The next wave of AI x Finance innovation has just begun, and this is only the first chapter.
