Aave Labs accelerates retail DeFi with Stable acquisition

Aave Labs has acquired Stable Finance, a fintech company known for simplifying stablecoin savings. The move is a bid to translate Aave’s institutional DeFi success into accessible products for everyday users.

According to an announcement on Oct. 23, Aave Labs has acquired San Francisco-based Stable Finance in a strategic acqui-hire. The deal brings Stable’s founder, Mario Baxter Cabrera, aboard as Aave’s new Director of Product, with his entire engineering team also making the move.

While financial terms remain undisclosed, the acquisition centers on talent and technology, with the existing Stable app slated to be phased out and its underlying systems integrated into future Aave products.

Aave’s push into everyday finance

The development comes after the launch of Horizon, Aave’s institutional platform that surpassed $300 million in deposits within weeks of its August debut. That early success appears to have laid the groundwork for a parallel push into the retail segment, where Aave now aims to make earning, borrowing, and saving in stablecoins as simple as using a neobank app.

Stable Finance plays a critical role in this vision. The company made its name with a free iOS app that distilled the complexity of onchain yield into a one-click savings experience.

By allowing users to deposit directly from bank accounts or cards, the app facilitated $38 billion in deposits, demonstrating a massive, latent demand for low-volatility crypto earnings. Its technology abstracted away blockchain wallets, gas fees, and protocol interactions, creating a familiar user interface for a new financial system.

“Mario and the Stable team have built unique technology supporting a seamless user experience that will help accelerate our consumer roadmap and extend the Aave protocol to new users,” Aave Labs founder, Stani Kulechov, said.

The move is part of a broader pattern for Aave Labs, marking its third strategic acqui-hire in as many years. The company previously integrated the teams from Sonar in 2022 and Family in 2023, each time bolstering its in-house design and product capabilities.