SAN FRANCISCO— Kite, a company building the foundational trust infrastructure for the agentic web, today announced that it has raised $18 million in Series A funding, bringing total cumulative funding to $33 million. The round was led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst. Other investors in the company include 8VC, Samsung Next, SBI US Gateway Fund, Vertex Ventures, Hashed, HashKey Capital, Dispersion Capital, Alumni Ventures, Avalanche Foundation, GSR Markets, LayerZero, Animoca Brands, Essence VC, and Alchemy.
Formerly known as Zettablock, Kite leverages years of experience in distributed infrastructure systems to bring forth a new architecture purpose-built for the agentic web. The team previously built large-scale, real-time data infrastructures serving decentralized networks like Sui, Polygon, Chainlink, and EigenLayer. Kite is built directly on that foundation to serve a new breed of users: agents.
The company recently launched Kite Agent Identity Resolution, or “Kite AIR” – a pioneering solution that enables autonomous agents to authenticate, transact, and operate independently in real-world environments. The system delivers programmable identity, native stablecoin payment, and policy enforcement on a blockchain optimized for autonomous agents. Kite AIR includes two core components: Agent Passport, a verifiable identity with operational guardrails; and Agent App Store, where agents can discover and pay to access services such as APIs, data, and commerce tools. It is live today through open integrations with popular commerce platforms like Shopify and PayPal.
“From the beginning, we believed autonomous agents would be the dominant UI for the future digital economies. To function, they need structured and verifiable data, That was our first step,” said Chi Zhang, Co-Founder and CEO of Kite. “Next come identity, trust, and programmable payments. Today’s human-centric systems are too rigid and brittle for swarms of agents conducting micro-transactions at machine speed. Kite AIR solves that”.
Today, using publicly available APIs, any PayPal or Shopify merchant can opt in through the Kite Agent App Store and become discoverable to AI shopping agents. Purchases are settled on-chain with full traceability, using stablecoins and programmable permissions. Kite is also actively building additional integrations across commerce, finance, and data platforms.
“Kite is doing the foundational work we believe will define how agents operate tomorrow,” said Marc Bhargava, Managing Director at General Catalyst. “They are building the rails for the machine-to-machine economy.”
“Kite is the first real infrastructure that is purpose-built for the agentic economy,” said Alan Du, Partner at PayPal Ventures. “Payment has proven to be a challenging technical gap. Solutions like virtual cards provide only short-term workarounds. Latency, fees, and chargebacks further complicate things. Kite bridges this critical gap by providing stablecoin-based, millisecond-level settlement with low transaction fees and no chargeback fraud risks. This enables new economic models such as agent-to-agent metered billing, micro-subscription, and high frequency trading.”
That vision is shared by industry leaders working on the future of programmable payments and agentic commerce.
“Kite’s foundational trust infrastructure together with the benefits of a well-regulated stablecoin for agentic payments will create unprecedented opportunities,” said Steve Everett, Head of Global Market Development, PayPal Crypto and Digital Assets. “Enabling simultaneous, atomic settlement, governed by smart contracts that allow for real-time tracking and auditing across highly performant blockchain protocols will be the killer combination that delivers the promises of programmable payments in the exciting frontier of agentic commerce. This opens the door for a truly global, automated economy where people, enterprise and machine can interact with ease and trust.”
Kite’s founding team brings unmatched expertise across the three pillars required to power the agent economy: blockchain protocol engineering, large-scale data infrastructure, and applied AI. CEO Chi Zhang holds a PhD in AI from UC Berkeley and led core data products at Databricks. CTO Scott Shi built real-time AI infrastructure at Uber, was a founding engineer on Salesforce Einstein AI. Kite’s team holds over 30 patents and publications at top conferences like NeurIPS and ICML. The broader team includes engineers and researchers from Uber, Databricks, Salesforce, and NEAR, with academic roots at UC Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Oxford, and the University of Tokyo.
About Kite
Kite is building the foundational infrastructure for agentic internet. Its platform provides autonomous agents with cryptographic identity, programmable permissions, and native access to stablecoin payments. By enabling agents to transact, coordinate, and operate independently, Kite is creating the trust transaction layer for the agentic economy.
Learn more: gokite.ai | docs.gokite.ai
About General Catalyst
General Catalyst is a global investment and transformation company that partners with the world’s most ambitious entrepreneurs to drive resilience and applied AI.
We support founders with a long-term view who challenge the status quo, partnering with them from seed to growth stage and beyond.
With offices in San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Berlin, Bangalore, and London, we have supported the growth of 800+ businesses, including Airbnb, Anduril, Applied Intuition, Commure, Glean, Guild, Gusto, Helsing, Hubspot, Kayak, Livongo, Mistral, Ramp, Samsara, Snap, Stripe, Sword, and Zepto.
For more: www.generalcatalyst.com, @generalcatalyst
About PayPal Ventures
PayPal Ventures is the global corporate venture arm of PayPal. We invest for financial return in six areas of high strategic relevance to PayPal, including fintech, payments, commerce enablement, artificial intelligence, blockchain & cryptocurrency, and regulatory/cyber technology. Through the expertise, experience, and vast network of PayPal Ventures – and the companies we invest in – we are helping to bring transformative solutions to market faster. For more information, please visit: https://www.paypal.vc.