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Natural Raises $30 Million Series A to Build Payments Infrastructure for AI Agents, Setting Up a Challenge to Stripe

Natural closed a $30 million Series A led by Forerunner to build payment rails built for autonomous AI agents rather than human checkout, positioning itself against Stripe.

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startups funding fintech AI agents venture capital Series A
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Overview

AI agents can already identify vendors, compare prices, and message a supplier to arrange a delivery — but when it comes time to actually pay, they still need to involve a human, according to TechCrunch. Natural, a San Francisco-based fintech startup, wants to close that gap. The company announced it has raised a $30 million Series A led by Kirsten Green at Forerunner, bringing its total funding to more than $40 million, according to Natural’s press release.

What We Know

  • Natural builds what TechCrunch describes as “an agent orchestration layer that enables AI agents to move and store funds,” letting companies allow their agents to “make autonomous payments, collect funds, and transact with both humans and other agents”.
  • The core problem, as TechCrunch frames it: “these financial rails were built for human-initiated transactions, not autonomous AI agents,” and “traditional payment systems like credit cards and ACH rely on human authorization for transactions, which slows down agents engineered to work autonomously.”
  • The company was founded in 2025 by CEO Kahlil Lalji along with Eric Wang and Walt Leung, according to TechCrunch. Lalji and Wang previously co-founded Ivella, a Y Combinator-backed banking product for couples that was sold to Earnin in 2023, where Lalji then worked as an engineer for two years. Leung previously worked as an engineering manager at Nextdoor.
  • Natural now has a team of 17 and “is hiring aggressively across every function,” the company said in its funding announcement. TechCrunch reports the startup has attracted senior staff who previously worked at fintech companies Stripe, Ramp, and Square.
  • “Agents are going to become one of the most, if not the most, important financial actors in the global economy,” Lalji, Natural’s CEO and co-founder, said in the announcement. He added: “We are moving with an unbelievable level of intensity because the market is moving extremely quickly.”
  • Lalji told TechCrunch that “the number of payments that may occur in the world may be two or three or four orders of magnitude greater than the number of payments that exist today.”
  • Beyond Forerunner, the round drew participation from a wide roster of fintech and AI executives and investors, including Darragh Buckley (CEO of Increase), Paul Klein IV (CEO of Browserbase), Akshay Kothari (co-founder of Notion), Pete Koomen (a general partner at Y Combinator), Art Levy (chief business officer at Brex), and Jake and Logan Paul as general partners of Antifund, according to Natural’s press release.
  • Natural has already launched six products: Wallets, described as FDIC-insured wallets for agents; Vaults, one-way accounts where “agents move money in, never out”; Pay, for sending money to an agent, business, or consumer; Request, for collecting money; Transfer, for moving funds between internal and external accounts; and Connect, for building platforms and marketplaces on top of Natural, the company said. It plans to roll out Voice, Accept, and Cards in the coming months, with Charge, Credit, Direct, and Billing slated for the fourth quarter.
  • TechCrunch describes Natural as being in direct competition with Stripe, which is “also racing to redesign payment rails for AI agents.” While Natural plans to incorporate stablecoins into its architecture, it is also building support for traditional bank payments — a hybrid approach that TechCrunch notes differs from rivals such as DCVC-backed Skyfire Systems, which is pursuing USD-backed stablecoins for agent-to-agent payments.

What We Don’t Know

Natural has not disclosed a valuation for the Series A round. It is also not yet clear how large its enterprise customer base is, how the company plans to handle disputed transactions at scale, or how quickly Stripe’s own AI-agent payment efforts will reach the market.

Analysis

Natural’s raise lands amid a broader scramble among payments companies and startups to define how commerce will work once software agents, not people, are initiating transactions. Its pitch — an orchestration layer spanning both stablecoins and conventional bank rails — sets it apart from stablecoin-first competitors like Skyfire Systems, while putting it on a collision course with Stripe, an incumbent with over a decade of infrastructure built around human checkout flows. Whether agent-initiated payments reach the volume Lalji is betting on will determine whether that positioning becomes a durable business or a premature land grab.