Natural raises $30M Series A 193 days after launch to build payment infrastructure for AI agents
Natural raises $30M Series A 193 days after launch to build payment infrastructure for AI agents #
San Francisco startup Natural has raised a $30 million Series A led by Kirsten Green, founder and managing partner of consumer-focused venture firm Forerunner Ventures, 193 days after the company launched. The round brings total funding to more than $40 million. Natural is competing directly with Stripe in agentic payments, a category built around transactions executed by AI agents rather than humans.
The round included Human Capital, Abstract, and Wischoff Ventures, along with angel investors. Previous backers include fintech companies Bridge, Brex, Mercury, Increase, and Unit, as well as technology platforms Vercel and Notion.
Natural was co-founded by CEO Kahlil Lalji, Eric Wang, and Walt Leung roughly a year ago. The company’s founding premise is that existing financial infrastructure was built for human operators and cannot adequately support AI agents acting as autonomous financial actors. Natural argues that AI agents are already holding digital wallets, paying vendors, collecting revenue, and transacting with other agents without requiring human authorization for each step.
Rather than building on top of third-party rails, Natural built its own core infrastructure, including proprietary ledgering, multi-bank settlement, fraud detection, compliance tooling, and what it calls “agent identity,” a mechanism for verifying which agent is transacting and on whose behalf. Banking services are provided through Column N.A., an FDIC-member bank.
Lalji previously co-founded Ivella, a YC-backed couples banking app sold to EarnIn in 2023. He told reporters that Natural has made enough foundational architectural decisions to compete with established players. Stripe has also been redesigning its payment infrastructure with AI agents in mind.
Green said Forerunner was attracted by what she described as Natural’s “consumer DNA” inside an infrastructure company, a reference to the firm’s history of backing companies including Chime, Glossier, and Warby Parker. The agentic AI payments segment is projected to grow from roughly $7 billion today to $93 billion by 2032, according to industry estimates. Natural has operated in beta through this announcement and has not disclosed live transaction volumes.
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