Nevermined Raises $4M to Build 'PayPal for AI', Enabling AI-to-AI Transactions

Nevermined raises $4m to build 'PayPal for AI'

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. Generative Ventures led the round, with participation from Polymorphic Capital, Near, Halo Capital, Factor Capital, Lyrik Ventures and Arca. Nevermined is developing the "PayPal for AI" to enable seamless payments between AI agents. The company's protocol is designed to address the unique challenges of AI-Commerce, where, it says, traditional rigid payment systems fall short. Nevermined helps AI developers monetise their applications by managing payments, usage tracking, and credit systems - essentially acting as a finance and billing management platform for AI agents and tools. Don Gossen, CEO, Nevermined, says: "The future of commerce isn't just about humans trading with humans anymore. It's about AI agents transacting with other AI agents, and we need entirely new payment systems to facilitate that. This funding will allow us to accelerate our mission of building the financial rails for the emerging AI economy." Aitor Argomaniz, CTO, Nevermined, adds: "Current payment infrastructure was built for static transactions, like selling t-shirts on the internet, where the price of a small shirt doesn't change over time. AI agents are dynamic and require an equally dynamic payments system that can respond instantly to new requests." Nevermined is not the only startup tackling the AI-commerce market: AIsa has just launched its own payment infrastructure tailored to the unique needs of the AI economy.

Decentralized payments startup Nevermined raises $4M to unlock AI-to-AI agent commerce - SiliconANGLE

Decentralized payments startup Nevermined raises $4M to unlock AI-to-AI agent commerce Swiss artificial intelligence payments startup Nevermined SÀRL said today it has closed on a $4 million funding round. The money will be used to accelerate the development of its decentralized infrastructure for AI-to-AI transactions, enabling AI agents to engage in automated commerce. Today's round was led by Generative Ventures and saw participation from a host of others, including Polymorphic Capital, Near Protocol, Halo Capital Factor Capital, Lyrik Ventures and Arca, plus a number of angel investors. Nevermined sees itself as becoming the "PayPal for AI," with its decentralized payments infrastructure providing the rails for AI agents to pay and be paid. It says it will make it easier for AI developers to make money from AI agents, with comprehensive tools for managing payments, tracking usage and the creation of credit systems for users. AI agents are more advanced AI systems that can perform complex, multistep tasks without human supervision. They represent a big advance on traditional large language models such as ChatGPT, which can generate outputs only in response to human prompts. They are one of the hottest trends in the AI industry today, and many believe they will soon revolutionize the way enterprises conduct business, though others predict they will take awhile to develop. The startup says it's relying on Web3 technologies such as blockchain, cryptocurrencies and smart contracts to solve the shortcomings of traditional payment systems, which fall short of what's required for autonomous AI agents. According to Nevermined Chief Technology Officer Aitor Argomaniz, existing payment infrastructure was designed for static transactions, such as selling t-shirts on eBay, where the price of that product very rarely changes. In contrast, Nevermined provides the tools needed to implement more dynamic pricing models, where rates vary over time based on user demand and other metrics. "AI agents are dynamic and require an equally dynamic payments system that can respond instantly to new requests," Argomaniz explained. "We've built the foundation already, and now we want to grow user adoption from both AI builders and AI agents." In addition to creating payment rails for AI agents, Nevermined is also building an ecosystem of tools for billing customers, subscriptions and more. Ultimately, it wants to create a comprehensive finance management platform that can address every aspect of AI payments. This will be necessary, because the future of commerce will be less about humans trading with humans, and much more about AI agents transacting with other AI agents, said Nevermined founder and Chief Executive Don Gossen. "This funding will allow us to accelerate our mission of building the financial rails for the emerging AI economy," he added. Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE said Nevermined understands that autonomous AI agents are going to transform everything with regards to how business is done in the modern world. "They know that AI agent commerce is going to need a different payment model and infrastructure, as well as a legal and regulatory outline," the analyst said. "Building that won't be easy, but it's good to see Nevermined is having a go at it, and it will be exciting to see what kind of difference it can make in a payment industry that has traditionally always been quite conservative and somewhat resistant to change." The startup has already made some progress, establishing partnerships with AI firms such as Naptha AI Pty Ltd., which creates AI models based on collaborative intelligence; Peaq Foundation Ltd., a startup building an AI-powered decentralized physical infrastructure network for the energy sector; and Combinder, a smart electricity grid startup. Ultimately, AI-to-AI payments could become a very big business. The McKinsey Global Institute forecasts AI technologies to add $13 trillion to the world's global economic output by 2030. By building a dedicated payments infrastructure for AI agents, Nevermined believes it can play a key role in unlocking that potential.

Nevermined Raises $4 Million to Help AI Agents Pay and Get Paid | PYMNTS.com

Nevermined has raised $4 million to accelerate adoption of its AI-to-AI payment protocol that enables artificial intelligence (AI) agents to pay and get paid. The company's AI payment rails and infrastructure allow AI agents to discover, negotiate and compensate each other in real time, Nevermined said in a Thursday (Jan. 9) press release. Nevermined will use the new funding to support the expansion of its go-to-market strategy, its team and its partnerships in the AI ecosystem, according to the release. "The future of commerce isn't just about humans trading with humans anymore. It's about AI agents transacting with other AI agents, and we need entirely new payment systems to facilitate that," Nevermined CEO Don Gossen said in the release. One use case of this offering is a finance and billing management platform for AI agents and tools, as it manages payments, usage tracking and credit systems to help AI developers monetize their applications, per the release. The protocol is designed to address unique challenges of AI commerce that cannot be solved by traditional payment systems, according to the release. "Current payment infrastructure was built for static transactions, like selling t-shirts on the internet, where the price of a small shirt doesn't change over time," Nevermined Chief Technology Officer Aitor Argomaniz said in the release. "AI agents are dynamic and require an equally dynamic payments system that can respond instantly to new requests." AI agents are taking over operations at major companies and making decisions that, until recently, required human managers, PYMNTS reported in November. Because they are autonomous software systems that can understand the context and make decisions across multiple business tasks, unlike basic chatbots, AI agents can handle complex workflows independently. In a recent deployment of the technology, Jet.AI said in December that it launched an agentic AI model that helps customers select and book private jets. Dubbed "Ava," the AI model can be contacted via phone or text and it provides real-time aircraft availability, pricing and guidance to help customers select the right jet for their journey.

Meet the startup pioneering AI-to-AI commerce -- and why it matters

As AI systems become more ubiquitous, those systems will further interact with other AI systems, requesting data, resources, or functionalities. They'll also need to pay for those requests, in many cases, which will require transactions. Typically, that'd require some human interaction -- but not if a payment system exists that allows for autonomous payments between those systems, which is exactly what one firm has in mind. Nevermined -- a company that provides AI payment infrastructure -- recently announced that it's raised $4 million to build out and further develop a system that will allow for AI-to-AI transactions. In effect, the company is developing what it describes as a "PayPal for AI," which won't require human interaction. AI agents are a type of artificial intelligence system that can perform certain tasks without any human intervention, such as collect or analyze data, answer customer questions, and more. They're already being used by numerous companies, such as Amazon. In some respects, they're designed to, and are actively replacing human workers. And now, it seems that Nevermined is determined to help them transact with one another, removing even more human fingerprints from the mix.