TL;DR
- Kite announces a new investment from Coinbase Ventures, extending its $33M Series A.
- The L1 blockchain has natively integrated with Coinbase’s x402 agent payment standard.
- The platform is designed to allow AI agents to make autonomous payments securely.
Kite, the Layer 1 (L1) blockchain platform focused on the autonomous agent economy, announced a strategic investment from Coinbase Ventures. This new funding is an extension of Kite’s recent $33 million Series A round, which was led by giants like PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst.
The participation of Coinbase Ventures underscores the growing confidence in the potential of an economy driven by artificial intelligence agents and in Kite’s role as fundamental infrastructure for agent-to-agent payments and AI commerce.
The core of the announcement is the news that Kite is natively integrating Coinbase’s x402 standard. With this move, Kite positions itself as one of the first L1 blockchains to implement x402-compatible payment primitives, becoming a primary execution and settlement layer for the protocol.
This deep, chain-level integration is designed to allow AI agents to seamlessly send, receive, and reconcile payments through standardized “intent mandates,” accelerating the adoption of the x402 standard.
Solving a Critical Bottleneck in the AI Revolution
Although AI agents can perform sophisticated operations, their autonomy is limited by requiring human approval for verifications and payments. Kite seeks to solve this critical “bottleneck.” Its blockchain network is built specifically for this purpose, offering three key pillars: secure digital identity (through the “Agent Passport”), programmable spending limits, and instant, low-cost settlements with native stablecoin support.
This infrastructure allows AI agents to verify their identity and enforce rules, ensuring that autonomous transactions are secure, verifiable, and compliant.
At the same time, they can operate independently within pre-established governance limits. Both Kite and Coinbase Ventures share the vision that autonomous AI agents will become “the largest new cohort of internet users,” and this platform aims to be the foundational base for their unique economic needs.
