As AI agents begin to undertake more complex tasks such as sourcing, price-for-money, billing, etc., the payment chain continues to require manual confirmation. Natural attempted to fill this gap by providing AI agents with a direct transferable payment and fund management infrastructure.
Completion of $30 million A round of financing
The start-up company recently completed a $30 million A round of financing, which was led by Kirsten Green, founder and managing partner of Forerunner. Upon completion of the financing, the cumulative value of Natural's financing reached US$ 40 million.
Natural was created in 2025 by Kahlil Lalji, Eric Wang and Walt Leung. Lalji, a financial product for partners, Ivella, was acquired by Earnin in 2023. The team would like Natural to be a layer of “agent organization infrastructure” to enable businesses to access the collection, payment and funds storage capacity of AI agents.
The goal is to get AI agents to trade on their own.
The core judgement of Natural is that the existing payment network is mainly focused on manual start-up of trade design and is difficult to fit with AI agents who operate autonomously. Both credit cards and ACH transfers usually require manual authorization, which slows down the automated process that originally operated at machine speed.
By reconfiguring the bottom payment process, the company wants AI agents to be able not only to make payments on behalf of the users, but also to collect them themselves and even to deal directly with other agents. According to this vision, AI proxy will not only be a tool for mandate implementation, but will also be a new type of participant who can independently complete a business process.
Aim for Stripe. Consider stabilizing the coin.
Natural sees Stripe as the main rival. The report mentions that Stripe is also moving forward with the adjustment of payment infrastructure for AI agents. Natural, for his part, hopes to take the lead in this new market with faster product overlay.
In addition to Stripe, other start-ups have entered the market in this direction. Some companies chose to use the United States dollar stabilization currency as a bottom-up clearing tool for AI agency transactions. Natural stated that, in the future, the stable currency would also be incorporated into the structure, while continuing to support the traditional banking payment system.
From the investor's point of view, Forerunner's bets are more than an AI closing tool. More importantly, Natural has attempted to redo the entire payment infrastructure, including the treatment of the lower-level issues such as the disputed transactions.
In the view of Lalji, if transactions move from “manpower speed” to “computer speed”, there may be a quantitative increase in global payments. This is also the central reason for Natural's bet on the AI agent's payment track.