Kite, a San Francisco startup formerly known as Zettablock, raised $18 million in a Series A round co-led by General Catalyst and PayPal Ventures, the company announced Sept. 2. The financing brings Kite’s total funding to $33 million and backs a platform designed to let autonomous AI agents execute transactions using stablecoins with on-chain settlement.
Kite AIR (Agent Identity Resolution) is the company’s newly launched stack for the so-called agentic web. Kite AIR gives AI agents verifiable identities, policy guardrails and programmable payment rails so agents can discover merchants, negotiate terms and settle payments programmatically.
Through integrations with Shopify and PayPal, merchants can opt in to be discoverable by AI shopping agents; purchases can then be settled on-chain using stablecoins to avoid high card fees and support tiny, split-second transfers. Kite says this approach enables agent-to-agent billing, microsubscriptions and other microtransaction-driven models that traditional payment rails struggle to support.
The startup plans to expand integrations across commerce, finance and data platforms and aims to position itself as a default stablecoin payment layer for autonomous agents operating at machine speed.
There are caveats: stablecoin-powered flows face regulatory scrutiny and issuer counterparty risk, and on-chain settlement depends on secure smart contracts and strong identity controls. Merchants and developers should evaluate compliance, custody and security trade-offs before adopting automated agent payments.
Source: CoinDesk. Read the original coverage for full details.