PayPal Ventures-backed startup Kite raises $18M series A to build the ‘agentic internet

Kite, an AI-blockchain startup backed by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst, has raised $18 million in Series A funding to build infrastructure for “agentic internet.”

Summary

• The round, joined by 8VC, Samsung Next, and Alumni Ventures, brings Kite’s total funding to $33 million.
• Cofounder Chi Zhang envisions AI agents that can authenticate, transact, and collaborate via a shared blockchain identity system.
• Kite’s Ozone testnet is live, allowing early users to stake tokens, earn XP, and prepare for future agent integrations.

Kite, a blockchain startup focused on enabling communication between AI agents, has secured $18 million in Series A funding. The round was led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst, with participation from 8VC, Samsung Next, and Alumni Ventures.

Cofounder and CEO Chi Zhang declined to disclose the company’s valuation or whether the deal included token warrants—which are promised tranches of a yet-to-be-released token—in addition to equity. This funding brings Kite’s total capital raised to $33 million, including an earlier seed round that had not been previously announced.

“This funding fuels our mission to build the foundational infrastructure for the agentic internet – providing unified identity, governance and native access to stablecoin payments that enable agents to authenticate, transact, and coordinate securely without intermediaries,” Kite said in the announcement on X.

About Kite’s vision for “agentic internet”

Formerly known as Zettablock, Kite is building blockchain infrastructure designed for what Zhang calls the “agentic internet,” where AI-powered assistants can transact and collaborate without human intermediaries. She believes that AI agents will only be able to trust each other if there’s a common system that can verify identities—such as confirming that one agent genuinely represents Amazon while another is tied to OpenAI.

“The normal way for us to do shopping at the moment is we go to the Amazon website or Shopify store and shop across the store, find the products,” Zhang told Fortune. “But in the future, it’s all going to be automated. So we won’t need to leave, let’s say, Perplexity, or ChatGPT.”

One envisioned application is allowing a user to simply type a request into a chatbot—such as asking for a T-shirt from a Shopify store—and have the AI autonomously find and purchase the product.

Kite’s Ozone testnet is already live, giving early users a chance to experiment with the platform’s infrastructure, stake testnet tokens to earn XP, and interact with partner AI agents once integrations roll out.