PayPal Ventures has made a strategic investment in Kite AI, a decentralized AI infrastructure provider, contributing $18 million in a Series A funding round. This brings Kite AI’s total funding to $33 million, signaling strong confidence in AI-powered Web3 ecosystems.
Kite AI’s Vision for AI Agents in Web3
Kite AI aims to build decentralized infrastructure for autonomous AI agents, creating a new user interface for future digital economies. These AI agents are autonomous programs capable of making decisions and executing transactions without constant human input.
To achieve this, Kite introduced AIR (Agent Identity and Registry), a system enabling agents to authenticate, transact, and manage programmable identities. AIR includes:
- Agent Passport – A multi-layered identity service ensuring cryptographic trust.
- Agent App Store – A marketplace for AI agents to access custom services, data sources, and commerce tools.
Kite’s co-founder and CEO Chi Zhang highlighted that traditional systems are “too rigid and brittle for swarms of agents conducting micro-transactions at machine speed.” He added that identity, trust, and programmable payments are essential to unlock the full potential of AI agents.
Alan Du, partner at PayPal Ventures, emphasized that Kite provides “the first real infrastructure purpose-built for the agentic economy.” He noted that stablecoin-based millisecond-level settlement bridges a major technical gap in payments for AI systems.
Meanwhile, Steve Everett, head of global market development at PayPal’s digital assets unit, stated that such solutions pave the way for “a truly global, automated economy where people, enterprise, and machines interact with ease and trust.”
Growing Role of AI in Web3
The adoption of AI-driven agents in Web3 is accelerating. Experts predict that these agents will soon become Ethereum’s biggest power users, managing on-chain transactions, commerce integrations, and financial services.
With PayPal backing Kite AI, the agentic economy is moving closer to reality, potentially transforming payments, identity systems, and decentralized commerce for the next generation of the internet.
Disclaimer
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