Kite Secures $18M from PayPal to Build Blockchain for AI Agents

AI blockchain startup Kite has secured $18 million in a Series A funding round co-led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst. The investment, announced on Tuesday, brings the company’s total cumulative funding to $33 million and will support its development of infrastructure for an “agentic internet.”

The new capital is earmarked for building a blockchain-based protocol designed to allow different artificial intelligence applications to communicate and transact securely. In an official announcement on X, Kite, formerly known as Zettablock, outlined its mission to provide “unified identity, governance and native access to stablecoin payments that enable agents to authenticate, transact, and coordinate securely without intermediaries.” 

The goal is to create a shared and decentralized database where AI agents can verify each other’s identities and interact without relying on centralized platforms.

Kite’s vision, as CEO Chi Zhang, points to a future where autonomous AI agents handle complex tasks, such as e-commerce, without direct human intervention: “The normal way for us to do shopping at the moment is we go to the Amazon website or Shopify store… But in the future, it’s all going to be automated,” Zhang explained, suggesting users might not need to leave interfaces like ChatGPT to execute transactions.

Zhang is yet to disclose her startup’s valuation, in addition to that specific reason behind the raise is also unknown. As of now raise is assumed to be purely for equity or token warrants, which are promised tranches of a yet-to-be-released cryptocurrency.

The Series A round drew a diverse group of high-profile investors. Participants included 8VC, Samsung Next, Alumni Ventures, SBI US Gateway Fund, Vertex Ventures, Hashed, HashKey Capital, Dispersion VC, Avalanche FDN, GSR, LayerZero, Animoca Brands, Essence Venture, and Alchemy. Despite the successful raise, Zhang declined to disclose the Silicon Valley startup’s valuation or specify whether the investment was for equity or included token warrants.

The investment is proportional to trending capacity of autonomous AI agents, so it can gain traction, though the underlying technology remains nascent. Alan Du, a partner at PayPal Ventures, noted that the development of AI agents is still in its early stages. “I think there’s a lot more infrastructure level building that still needs to happen in order for agents to truly become the transformative force that it’s sort of destined for,” Du stated.

This investment from big players like PayPal and General Catalyst grows confidence in blockchain as a critical trust layer for an AI-driven future. This indicates growing interests in blockchain as a key layer of trust for an AI-driven future. 

As AI agents become more autonomous, identity needs to be checked, and also safe ways to make transactions. Without a trusted shared ledger, fraud and trickery could happen when agents talk to each other. Kite’s project directly handles these major problems and aims to create the basic framework for a new economy in which AI agents can safely interact and do business without the need for centralized middlemen.

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