Natural Raises $30M Series A to Build Payments Infrastructure for AI Agents
The startup is redesigning payment rails for autonomous software and adding stablecoin and bank payment support as it competes with Stripe.
- Natural announced yesterday a $30 million Series A led by Kirsten Green, founder and managing partner at VC firm Forerunner, bringing the AI payments startup's total funding to $40 million.
- CEO Kahlil Lalji realized about a year ago that AI agents were evolving faster than existing financial architecture, which relies on human authorization through credit cards and ACH, slowing autonomous transactions.
- Natural's team draws senior staff from fintech giants Stripe, Ramp, and Square, with co-founders Eric Wang and Walt Leung, former engineering manager at Nextdoor, joining Lalji after his previous startup Ivella sold to Earnin in 2023.
- Natural is launching 16 products with six now available, including Voice, Accept, and Cards rolling out in coming months, enabling agents to autonomously move money, collect funds, and transact with humans and other agents.
- Multiple startups including DCVC-backed Skyfire Systems are racing to redesign agent payments using USD-backed stablecoins, though Lalji believes the market could expand orders of magnitude if transactions happen at computer speed rather than human speed.
14 Articles
14 Articles
Natural raises $30M to build a Stripe for AI agents
The next big customer for a payments company may not be a person at all. It may be an AI agent, and a startup called Natural has raised $30 million to serve it. The Series A was led by Kirsten Green at Forerunner Ventures, and closed when Natural was just 193 days old. It takes […] This story continues at The Next Web
AI agents are starting to perform more complex tasks, but they still need humans to process payments. Natural is seeking to solve this problem. Natural is raising $30 million to reinvent payments for AI agents and compete with Stripe. AI agents are starting to perform more complex tasks, such as identifying vendors capable of delivering shipments, comparing prices, and communicating with the vendor to arrange delivery. But when it comes to proce…
TechCrunch
technewstube.comNatural raises $30M to reinvent payments for AI agents — and take on Stripe
The one-year-old startup aims to reinvent financial architecture for autonomous AI transactions.
Missoulian
Natural Raises $30M Series A to Build Payments Infrastructure for AI Agents
SAN FRANCISCO, July 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Natural today announced that it has raised a $30 million Series A led by Kirsten Green at Forerunner, with continued participation from all major investors. The round was raised when the company was…
Stripe rival Natural raises $30M just 193 days after launch to build the payments stack for AI agents
Natural has raised a $30 million Series A led by Forerunner’s Kirsten Green just 193 days after launch, bringing total funding to more than $40 million in under a year. CEO Kahlil Lalji is positioning Natural as a direct Stripe rival — but with AI agents, not humans, as the customer — betting autonomous systems will become the world’s most important financial actors. The agentic AI payments market is projected to grow from $7 billion to $93 bi…
Why the GCC's AI payments push needs enterprise infrastructure
Something important happened in the Gulf over the past month that most business leaders have not yet registered. The Central Bank of the UAE granted approval to Mal, an AI-native Islamic digital bank, making the UAE what Mal describes as the first market globally to grant in-principle regulatory approval to an AI-native digital banking platform. Around the same time, Visa confirmed that its Agentic Ready programme, the global framework that cert…
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