A year-old startup named Natural has successfully raised $30 million in fresh capital, signalling its ambitious intent to fundamentally redesign the financial architecture underpinning transactions conducted by artificial intelligence agents. This significant Series A funding round, led by VC firm Forerunner, brings Natural's total funding to $40 million and sets the stage for a direct challenge to established payment processing giants, most notably Stripe.
Traditional financial systems, often referred to as 'financial rails', were primarily constructed for human-initiated transactions. This means processes like credit card payments or direct debits typically require human authorisation, which creates a bottleneck for increasingly sophisticated AI agents. These agents are now capable of complex tasks such as identifying suppliers, comparing prices, and coordinating deliveries, but they still hit a wall when it comes to autonomous payment execution. Natural aims to solve this by building an 'agent orchestration layer' that allows AI agents to independently manage and transfer funds.
Co-founder and CEO Kahlil Lalji, who has a background in banking and finance, identified this critical gap as AI agents began to evolve faster than the existing financial infrastructure could support. Natural, founded in 2025 with co-founder Eric Wang and former engineering manager Walt Leung, is developing a system that will allow companies to integrate its infrastructure, empowering their AI agents to make autonomous payments, collect funds, and transact seamlessly with both human counterparts and other AI agents. This could unlock a new era of efficiency for businesses reliant on automation.
Kirsten Green, founder and managing partner at Forerunner, expressed that her firm was drawn to Natural's broader vision, which extends beyond simple agent-initiated purchases to a complete reimagining of payment infrastructure, including how disputes are handled. While Natural has been operating in a beta phase, Lalji believes the company has made crucial architectural decisions that provide it with a strong competitive edge against incumbents. The startup's mission has already attracted senior talent from major fintech companies like Stripe, Ramp, and Square, underscoring the industry's recognition of this burgeoning market.
The race to dominate AI agent payments is heating up. While Natural plans to incorporate traditional bank payments alongside stablecoins into its architecture, other startups, such as Skyfire Systems, are also exploring solutions, often focusing on USD-backed stablecoins. Lalji's long-term vision suggests that if transactions can occur at computer speed rather than human speed, the global volume of payments could increase by several orders of magnitude, creating a vast new market opportunity for the company that can provide the foundational infrastructure.