Natural has successfully raised $30 million in a Series A funding round. These funds are earmarked to accelerate the development of specialized payment infrastructure designed specifically for the needs of AI agents. The round was led by Forerunner, with existing investors continuing to provide support, bringing the company's total funding to over $40 million.
The investment came less than a year after the company's launch and reflects growing confidence that AI agents will increasingly participate in financial transactions. The new round attracted the attention of founders and executives from leading technology and fintech companies, underscoring significant industry interest in the emerging agent payments sector.
Natural was founded by individuals such as Kahlil Lalji, Eric Wang, and Walt Leung. The company is developing a specialized payment platform that enables AI agents to manage funds, move money, make purchases, collect payments, and conduct transactions across various banking networks and payment channels. The company believes that autonomous AI systems will become significant financial participants as businesses increasingly adopt agents for self-performing work tasks. Instead of using infrastructure designed for humans, Natural is creating a dedicated financial stack tailored to the operational requirements of AI-based software.
Natural has already released six products to the public, including Wallets, Vaults, Pay, Request, Transfer, and Connect. These services allow businesses to create financial accounts for AI agents, execute fund transfers, process payments, and integrate payment capabilities into marketplaces and platforms. In the coming months, the company plans to expand its platform with new products such as Voice, Accept, and Cards. These new features will enable AI agents to securely accept payment data, process payments from vendors, and use specialized payment cards.
Later this year, Natural intends to introduce the Charge, Credit, Direct, and Billing products. These additions will provide support for API-based billing, credit facilities for AI agents, direct access to payment channels, and usage-based payment models for autonomous software.
The secured funds will help Natural continue building its proprietary banking and payment infrastructure, as well as expanding its engineering and commercial teams. Despite being young, the company claims to have developed most of its core technology internally and is actively hiring staff across all departments. Investors believe that AI agents are transforming from simple productivity tools into autonomous economic participants capable of managing financial operations on behalf of businesses. As adoption grows, demand is expected to increase for specialized infrastructure that manages identity, compliance, reconciliation, fraud prevention, and payment orchestration for these digital workers.
The Series A was led by Forerunner with participation from existing investors. Additional sponsors include founders and executives from Human Capital, Abstract, Increase, HappyRobot, Browserbase, Notion, Privy, Brex, Y Combinator, Antifund, and several other technology firms. Natural stated that the new capital will be directed toward further product development, as the company is building what it calls the foundational payment infrastructure for AI agents. The company predicts that autonomous software will become an increasingly vital part of global commerce, requiring financial systems designed specifically for machine transactions rather than traditional human workflows. Thus, Natural aims to become the financial backbone powering the next generation of autonomous digital economies.
Gritt has successfully raised $26 million in investments that will be used to scale infrastructure automation using artificial intelligence. Obvious Ventures led the round, with participation from Union Square Ventures, Active Impact Investments, and existing investors, including First Round Capital, Climactic, Congruent Ventures, and VSC Ventures.
With this new injection of capital, Gritt's total funding has reached $32.4 million. The company plans to use the acquired capital to expand its operations and further develop an intelligent robotic platform designed for complex outdoor construction environments.
Founded by Punith Puri and Vishal Dugar, Gritt develops robotic systems to automate construction equipment. Its AI-based system can autonomously perform tasks such as material handling, assembly, placement, inspection, and project planning. Gritt's technology integrates with existing equipment on sites, allowing contractors to apply automation to their machinery and ensuring safe collaboration between robots and humans.
CEO Punith Puri noted that automating outdoor construction is more complex due to changing weather conditions, terrain specifics, and other unforeseen factors. He emphasized that their 'Physical AI' is specifically designed for such tasks, enabling the acceleration of construction for solar, bridge, and road projects, as well as large infrastructure projects like data centers, with robot support.
The company's platform continuously improves through learning from every completed project. Tasks that previously required months of system setup can now be adapted in just a few days, allowing robots to perform high-precision work on various construction sites. In addition to automation, Gritt collects real-time data from sites, including information on completed work, material movement, and changes in site conditions. This information helps project managers make faster decisions and optimize schedules.
The company has already implemented its systems in several large American construction firms involved in industrial-scale solar panel installation. According to Gritt, their robots have independently installed tens of thousands of solar panels without a single failure. Demand for automation is supported by industry challenges: it is expected that over 40% of the US construction workforce will retire by 2031, and the sector's overall productivity is declining, forcing companies to turn to AI and robotics to solve labor shortages.
Obvious Ventures stated that Gritt is creating a new category of physical AI by implementing intelligent automation in one of the most demanding industrial environments. Investors believe that the company's ability to learn after each deployment gives it a long-term competitive advantage. Gritt's long-term goal is to transform AI into a comprehensive object condition analysis platform that tracks resource usage, identifies potential workflow obstacles, and assists project managers in making real-time decisions. Ultimately, the startup aims to reduce manual labor for construction workers and allow contractors to accelerate the implementation of large-scale infrastructure projects, believing that intelligent robotics will become an integral part of modern construction.
