As AI agents begin to take on more complex tasks such as sourcing suppliers, comparing prices, and placing orders, the payment process still often requires manual approval. Natural aims to fill this gap by providing AI agents with directly callable payment and funds management infrastructure.
Completed a $30 million Series A funding round
The startup recently completed a $30 million Series A round led by Kirsten Green, founder and managing partner of Forerunner. Following this funding, Natural’s total raised capital has reached $40 million.
Natural was founded in 2025 by Kahlil Lalji, Eric Wang, and Walt Leung. Lalji previously founded Ivella, a financial product for couples, which was acquired by Earnin in 2023. The team aims to build Natural as an "agent orchestration infrastructure" that enables businesses to integrate payment, receipt, and funds storage capabilities for AI agents.
The goal is to enable AI agents to trade autonomously.
Natural's core insight is that existing payment networks are primarily designed around human-initiated transactions, making them ill-suited for autonomous AI agents. Whether it's credit card payments or ACH transfers, manual authorization is typically required, slowing down automation processes that otherwise operate at machine speed.
The company aims to reconstruct its underlying payment processes so that AI agents can not only make payments on behalf of users, but also receive payments independently and conduct direct transactions with other agents. Under this vision, AI agents will evolve beyond mere task-executing tools to become a new class of participants capable of independently completing commercial processes.
Attackers are targeting Stripe and also considering stablecoins.
Natural views Stripe as its primary competitor. The report notes that Stripe is also developing payment infrastructure tailored for AI agents. Natural aims to gain a first-mover advantage in this emerging market through faster product iteration.
Besides Stripe, other startups have also entered this space. Some companies have chosen to use USD-stablecoins as the underlying settlement tool for AI agent transactions. Natural states that it will also incorporate stablecoins into its architecture in the future, while continuing to support traditional banking payment systems.
From an investor’s perspective, Forerunner is not just betting on an AI checkout tool—they’re more focused on Natural’s attempt to rebuild the entire payment infrastructure, including fundamental issues like how disputed transactions are handled.
Lalji believes that if transactions shift from "human speed" to "computer speed," the global volume of payments could increase by orders of magnitude. This is also the core rationale behind Natural’s bet on the AI agent payments sector.