BitGo opens a research arm to pair AI with crypto payments
AI & Agents ·
BitGo has launched BitGo Labs, a new research unit tasked with building AI-powered crypto applications, with its first product, the Gokubu Pay card, as the initial release.
The announcement came directly from BitGo, which described the unit as a push into AI-crypto infrastructure rather than a single product launch. Corroborating coverage frames BitGo Labs as an innovation unit meant to explore the intersection of AI and crypto and to build financial infrastructure for what is being called the AI economy, with Gokubu Pay serving as the first concrete output of that effort, according to The Block.
The move follows a period of internal restructuring at BitGo. The company cut nearly 15% of its workforce earlier this year as it refocused on stablecoins, settlement, and AI infrastructure, a realignment that appears to set the stage for the formation of a dedicated research unit now tasked with turning that AI focus into shipped products. BitGo has separately been expanding its footprint as an institutional custody and settlement provider, with recent integrations spanning tokenized collateral, lending vaults, and bank-facing rails, underscoring a broader pattern of BitGo building infrastructure layers beyond pure custody, as detailed in its company profile.
Those adjacent moves include IXS selecting BitGo to secure Bitcoin collateral for institutional yield products, Liquid Mercury adopting BitGo's custody-as-a-service to back its trading operations, a partnership with ZKsync to build tokenized deposit rails for banks, and plans to integrate Morpho vault strategies to give institutions access to onchain lending yields. Taken together with the BitGo Labs launch, the pattern suggests BitGo is positioning itself not just as a custodian but as an infrastructure layer spanning payments, lending, and now AI-linked financial tools.
What remains unclear is the technical architecture of Gokubu Pay itself, including how AI is integrated into the card's functionality, what other products BitGo Labs intends to pursue, and the unit's staffing or funding relative to the recent workforce reduction. Also unaddressed so far is a timeline for wider rollout of Gokubu Pay or whether BitGo Labs will operate as a standalone entity or remain folded into BitGo's existing regulated infrastructure.