Skyfire CEO Says AI Agents Need New AI Payments Rails

A new startup is addressing a significant challenge in artificial intelligence: enabling AI agents to independently manage financial transactions.

San Francisco-based Skyfire has announced $8.5 million in seed funding from investors including Neuberger Berman, Brevan Howard and Ripple. The capital will fuel the development of Skyfire’s platform, which allows AI agents to hold balances, send and receive payments, and engage in financial transactions with humans and other AI entities.

“The next million customers for a lot of enterprises is going to be an AI agent,” Amir Sarhangi, CEO and co-founder of Skyfire, told PYMNTS. “Enterprises have to figure out very quickly how to sell their services to an AI agent versus a human being.”

AI agents are sophisticated software programs designed to perform tasks or provide services autonomously for humans or businesses. They’re becoming increasingly important in commerce, handling complex operations from managing supply chains to booking travel arrangements.

“AI agents are starting to take some of the mundane work that you do and are doing that on your behalf,” Sarhangi said. The agents’ round-the-clock operation, rapid data processing and complex decision-making abilities make them potentially transformative for many industries. However, their effectiveness has been limited by their inability to engage in financial transactions independently — a gap Skyfire aims to fill.

Enabling Micro-Transactions for AI

Skyfire’s platform is built to handle the unique requirements of AI agents. Unlike human customers who typically deal with subscription models or larger, infrequent transactions, AI agents often need to make micro-transactions — sometimes for fractions of a cent — instantly and around the clock.

To address this, Skyfire’s system uses USDC, a stablecoin backed 1:1 by the dollar, for value transfer. “The reason we use digital dollar is because it’s available 24/7, it’s global, and more importantly, it can be fractionalized,” Sarhangi said. “So we can actually do sub-penny type transactions.”

Skyfire’s approach enables 24/7 global transactions and allows for sub-penny payments. The platform can convert these digital dollars into local fiat currencies, a feature particularly useful for companies operating across multiple countries.

The rise of AI agents capable of engaging in commerce brings questions of identity, verification and trust. “One of the services we provide is a verification layer,” Craig DeWitt, co-founder and head of product at Skyfire, told PYMNTS. “You can think of the verification layer as a badge for your agent or for your service, which is essentially the beginnings of a digital identity.”

The company conducts know your business (KYB) checks on service providers and know your customer (KYC) procedures on agent developers. “If they pass those, then you have this verified network of folks who are only working with other folks who are essentially past that level,” DeWitt said.

Use Cases and Customer Focus

While still in private beta, Skyfire is already working with several customers. Sarhangi gave an example of a global auto parts company using Skyfire to streamline payments to service providers in India, automating small transactions that were previously manual and time-consuming.

“We essentially automate how they pay for these services, and we can do it completely on demand within seconds of when they want these end service providers to be paid and complete reconciliation provided for them,” Sarhangi said.

The platform also handles small-dollar transactions in global supply chains, where traditional payment systems often struggle.

Sarhangi acknowledged that many financial institutions might need to prepare more for the rapid changes in AI. “Banks have been using AI technologies for a long time,” he said, “but what I think most financial institutions are yet to be ready for is what’s happening within the B2B world and B2C world now, which is really now AI doing human tasks and starting to act like a human.”

As Skyfire exits stealth mode, it will focus on achieving product-market fit and identifying high-need areas for its platform and services. The company plans to announce partnerships and customers shortly.

“We’re at the beginning of a new era in AI,” said Sarhangi. “Our goal is to provide the financial infrastructure that will allow AI agents to reach their full potential, enabling new business models and transforming how we interact with AI in our daily lives.”

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