Circle announces the acquisition of Axelar's initial development team Interop Labs and its intellectual property, accelerating the layout of cross-chain interoperability

USDC issuer Circle has announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the Interop Labs team and its proprietary intellectual property. This acquisition is expected to be completed in early 2026. Circle looks forward to contributing to the broader interoperability space and continuing to explore opportunities that align with its vision of an open, interconnected, and scalable on-chain economy.

Interop Labs has been a key contributor to Axelar, one of the most advanced frameworks in cross-chain communication and token transfer, and has been driving the core development of Axelar alongside a growing community of open-source contributors. By directly integrating the talent and technology of Interop Labs into Circle, the aim is to accelerate the advancement of two core initiatives: the first is Arc—Circle's blockchain layer designed for enterprise applications, committed to becoming the operating system of the internet economy;

The second is the cross-chain transfer protocol. It is important to clarify that this transaction only involves the Interop Labs team and its proprietary intellectual property. As this team joins Circle, the Axelar network, foundation, and AXL token will continue to operate independently under community governance, and the open-source intellectual property will remain open. Another contributor to the Axelar project, Common Prefix, will take over the relevant work of Interop Labs.