Billing Platform Lava Raises $5.8m To Build Digital Wallets For The ‘agent-native Economy’

A caller startup, Lava Payments, intends to return connected costs giants by building a solution for nan modern web wherever AI agents now grip transactions for their customers. The thought came to laminitis Mitchell Jones aft he near his earlier Y Combinator-backed fintech startup, Lendtable, arsenic he began to research pinch AI.

He saw nan imaginable to build retired a strategy that would make utilizing AI and supplier payments simpler and much developer-friendly. While experimenting pinch an AI app and trying to build what he thought was thing simple, he realized he quickly spent much than $400 trying to build a basal form-filling agent.

“I kept moving into nan aforesaid issue,” he told TechCrunch. “I was utilizing nan aforesaid underlying models and devices again and again, but done different wrappers aliases platforms.” And each time, he had to commencement a caller subscription, re-authenticate, and salary separately, “even though I was already paying for entree to nan halfway model.”

“That felt fundamentally broken,” he continued. “I didn’t want to support rebuying entree to nan aforesaid point nether a different wrapper. What I wanted was a azygous wallet, 1 group of credits, and nan expertise to move betwixt otols and providers without starting complete each clip truthful I could salary for what I was using.”

He decided to motorboat Lava Payments arsenic a solution.

“Without Lava, agents can’t move smoothly done nan net because they perpetually get blocked erstwhile it comes clip to pay,” he said. He utilized Google arsenic an example, saying each clip a personification opens Google Maps, they don’t person to salary Google for that map, arsenic they’ve already paid Verizon and AT&T to entree nan internet. 

On Wednesday, nan startup announced a $5.8 cardinal seed information led by Lerer Hippeau. 

Others successful this abstraction see startups for illustration Metronome. 

“We spot nan world was very interconnected,” Jones said astir what makes his merchandise different. “What we’re really focused connected is building [for the] agent-native economy.” 

Born to a moving family successful Dayton, Ohio, Mitchell Jones said his parents ever told him nan champion measurement to get up was to activity hard, prevention money, and get a bully education.

“You know, a batch of nan things that astir group are told,” he recalled, erstwhile speaking pinch TechCrunch. 

Jones took that proposal to heart. He sewage a bully acquisition (Yale), held immoderate bully jobs (Goldman, Meta), and past founded immoderate companies (the fintechs Parable and Lendtable, nan second of which was YC S20). 

Jones said he met his lead investors for Lava because he went to precocious schoolhouse pinch Will McKelvey, now an investor astatine Lerer Hippeau. He said McKelvy has been pursuing his profession for a while and ever wanted to activity together someday, and Lava Payments was that someday.

Others successful nan information included Harlem Capital, Streamlined Ventures, and Westbound. The caller superior will beryllium utilized for hiring, building products, and processing go-to-market strategies. 

Overall, Jones is fresh for Lava to beryllium nan “invisible furniture that benignant of powers nan AI web,” he says, particularly arsenic AI agents find themselves much and much successful nan checkout line.  

“We should beryllium enabling agents to move, transact, and build without friction,” he said.

“We want to make judge that AI is thing that tin beryllium utilized by each azygous person, moreover a kid from Dayton, for illustration myself.”