Circuit & Chisel, developer of a web-wide protocol for agent-initiated commerce and founded by two former Stripe employees, has raised $19.2 million in Seed funding.
The funding round was led by Primary Venture Partners and ParaFi Capital with additional participation from Stripe, Coinbase Ventures, Solana Ventures, Samsung Next, and Polygon Labs.
The capital will be used to launch ATXP, a web-wide protocol that enables AI agents to handle the commerce lifecycle - from discovery to payment - without human oversight.
Founded by CEO Louis Amira, Stripe’s former head of crypto & AI partnerships, and CTO David Noel-Romas, Stripe’s former head of crypto engineering, Circuit & Chisel is building the foundational technologies that will enable agentic payments and movement around the web, compatible with up-and-coming standards like x402.
“We are on the cusp of a huge change in how the internet works,” says Amira. “We expect so much from AI agents in the coming years, but we don’t yet have the most fundamental technologies that will allow them to flourish within safe, agreed-upon constraints and protocols.
ATXP, the company’s first release, will act as a worldwide protocol, enabling low cost micropayments between AI agents, where transactions are initiated, negotiated, and executed entirely by intelligent agents.
“AI agents are increasingly navigating the web and transacting on our behalf and that requires an entirely new monetization infrastructure,” says Emily Man, Partner at Primary Venture Partners. “ATXP, enables instant, nested, delegated, and extremely low cost micropayments between AI agents, something that traditional payments rails can’t support.”