AEON is a settlement platform focused on the agency economy, raising $8 million in a pre-seed funding round led by YZi Labs.
The company announced on Monday that other investors in this round include IDG Capital, HashKey Capital, the Stanford Blockchain Builders Fund, and Oak Grove Ventures. The financing structure and post-money valuation were not disclosed.
AEON stated that with this new funding, its goal is to build the financial infrastructure required for the new economic paradigm by developing a settlement layer designed to facilitate interactions between AI agents.
The company launched its first AI payment product in May, stating that it enables AI agents to connect with over 50 million real-world merchants globally.
AEON Group has also partnered with BNB Chain to launch x402 Facilitator, a product natively built on BNB Chain infrastructure. The company states that this tool provides service providers within the BNB ecosystem with verifiable transactions, on-chain settlement, and immutable receipts.
“As production relations shift toward an economy driven by value exchanges between autonomous agents and artificial intelligence, we believe a settlement layer built for the agent economy will emerge, as this new economic paradigm requires its own financial infrastructure,” said Li Yuchun, CEO and co-founder of Yong’an.
Li added, "This funding will enable us to accelerate progress toward this goal, advance our settlement layer built for AI, and deepen collaborations with ecosystem partners such as Coinbase and BNB Chain."
AI agent tools have become an increasingly prominent topic in the cryptocurrency industry. Last week, MoonPaysaid the company acquired Dawn Labs and launched an AI tool designed to help "non-technical users" develop predictive market trading strategies.