MoonPay has 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.