In the beginning, there was the internet. But it wasn’t very good at the features that we know and love today, like being able to visit different webpages with ease, which in turn can pull real-time information from servers. Instead, tech whizzes such as the legendary Tim Berners-Lee developed a series of protocols like HTTP that would undergird the World Wide Web, creating the simple browsing experience that we take for granted today.
Proponents of AI would argue we’re in a similar place when it comes to agents. Everyone understands the appeal—imagine if you could have AI bots scurrying around to do your bidding, from booking flights to deploying a memecoin investing strategy based on Elon Musk’s tweets. Louis Amira, the former head of crypto & AI partnerships at the fintech giant Stripe, argues that the main reason that’s not possible yet is the lack of protocols allowing agents to speak with each other, as well as the myriad sources they need to access.
Amira and his cofounder, Stripe’s former head of crypto engineering David Noël-Romas, have raised $19.2 million for their new startup, Circuit & Chisel. Its first product is ATXP, a protocol that Amira described as the HTTP for agentic payments—and one that he hopes will maintain a more neutral stance than similar products already on the market, like Coinbase’s x402.
AI is still firmly in its picks and shovels era, and Circuit & Chisel’s ATXP will be entering an increasingly crowded space, including Google releasing its own open-source protocol last week, in partnership with Coinbase, that will help AI applications send and receive money, including stablecoins. But aside from its Stripe pedigree (and financial backing), Circuit & Chisel also received funding from Primary Venture Partners and ParaFi, along with Coinbase Ventures, illustrating how firms that would usually be competing to create the best solution are working, at least to some degree, in tandem. (Stripe is leading its own crypto-powered payments revolution with its stablecoin blockchain Tempo, which ATXP will support.)
The technical details of exactly what ATXP will allow are too convoluted to fit in the confines of this newsletter, nor could I do them justice. But what Amira emphasized is that, if ATXP is successful, it would enable the long-awaited promised land of microtransactions. Under this scheme, agents can go out and fetch information autonomously, empowered to pay tiny amounts of money for, say, scraping information from a private LinkedIn profile or accessing a paywalled Fortune article, and those platforms in turn would be empowered to charge tiny amounts of money. This would fundamentally change how the web functions, but as Amira acknowledges, it’s a “chicken and egg” problem of both needing technology like ATXP, and convincing the web to start embracing microtransactions.
If Circuit & Chisel pulls it off, Amira believes we’ll start to see a plethora of new AI agents, similar to the rise of iOS apps after the launch of the iPhone. He also acknowledges that, like HTTP, his own protocol won’t exactly be a moneymaker, but that his company plans to develop its own agents. It just needed the foundation first. “The models are getting better, their brains are getting smarter, but they don’t have the right tools,” Amira told me.
ICYMI…Jessica Mathews interviewed Scott Kupor, the former managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, who is now leading the Trump administration’s “workplace efficiency” initiative as the director of the Office of Personnel Management (or put less euphemistically, keeping the government running with 300,000 fewer employees).
Leo Schwartz
X: @leomschwartz
Email: leo.schwartz@fortune.com
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VENTURE DEALS
- Irregular, a San Francisco-based AI security lab, raised $80 million in funding. Sequoia Capital and Redpoint Ventures led the round and was joined by Swish Ventures and angel investors.
- Aleph, a New York City-based AI-powered financial planning and analysis platform, raised $29 million in Series B funding. Khosla Ventures led the round and was joined by Picus Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and Y Combinator.
- Grvt, a Singapore-based decentralized exchange, raised $19 million in Series A funding from ZKsync, Further Ventures, EigenCloud, and 500 Global.
- Le Walk, a New York City-based AI-powered tour guide and travel partner, raised $4.1 million in seed funding. Adverb Ventures and Lerer Hippeau led the round and were joined by Origins Fund and Point72 Ventures.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Specialty Building Products, backed by The Jordan Company, acquired OrePac Building Products, a Wilsonville, Ore.-based distributor of specialty building materials. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Stone Point Capital and CPP Investments acquired a majority stake in OneDigital, an Atlanta, Ga.-based insurance brokerage, financial services and workforce consulting firm. Financial terms were not disclosed.
EXITS
PEOPLE
- Inspired Capital, a New York City-based venture capital firm, promoted Kamran Ali and Chris Brown to partner.