Natural, a fintech startup creating the core infrastructure for AI-driven financial transactions, has emerged from stealth with a $9.8 million seed round co-led by Abstract and Human Capital. The funding also saw participation from Forerunner Ventures, Terrain, Restive Ventures, Genius Ventures, and several notable tech founders and executives, including Zach Abrams (Bridge), Immad Akhund (Mercury), Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh (Ramp), Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Itai Damti (Unit), and Matt Michaelis (Emprise Bank).
The company, founded by Kahlil Lalji (CEO), Eric Wang, and Walt Leung, aims to build the financial backbone for a world where AI agents—not just humans—can autonomously execute payments, contracts, and business transactions. As agents begin to handle a growing share of global commerce, Natural intends to provide the trusted rails for agent-to-agent and agent-to-human financial interactions.
Natural’s platform is designed for an emerging “agent economy” where digital agents act independently on behalf of businesses and consumers. The system provides secure identity, authorization, and low-latency settlement capabilities, enabling AI-powered entities to handle payments autonomously. The company’s technology focuses first on embedded B2B scenarios but aims to expand to all forms of intelligent financial transactions eventually.
Unlike traditional payment networks, which were built for manual human workflows, Natural’s infrastructure supports complex decision-making processes and approval chains required for agentic autonomy. Example applications include AI agents managing procurement and inventory in real time, automating vendor payments in healthcare, hiring and paying contractors in construction, or negotiating freight settlements in logistics.
The company’s technology is poised to address one of the final barriers to accurate AI-driven automation: financial execution at machine speed. And by enabling agents to handle payments independently yet safely, Natural could become a foundational player in the rapidly evolving intersection of AI and fintech.
KEY QUOTES:
“Today’s agents lack the fundamental infrastructure necessary to financially engage with the broader world. We need infrastructure allowing them to act securely and effectively. We’re here to fix that.”
Kahlil Lalji, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Natural
“AI is moving from demos to production, and a major bottleneck is money that moves at the speed of compute. Natural solves the missing link for AI workflows to be truly end-to-end by rebuilding the stack for developers and agents across identity, authorization, and low-latency settlement.”
Ramtin Naimi, Founder, Abstract
“After knowing Walt and Kahlil for more than five years, we had no doubt about their ambition and how high they’d set the bar for the team they want to build. We are excited to lead Natural’s seed round and work closely with them to scale an exceptional team building the payment stack for AI agents.”
Baris Akis, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Human Capital
