PayPal Ventures backs Kite AI with $18M to power AI agents

Kite AI raised $18 million in a Series A round led by PayPal Ventures, bringing its total funding to $33 million to build decentralized infrastructure for AI agents in web3.

Decentralized AI infrastructure provider Kite AI raised $18 million in its Series A funding round led by PayPal Ventures, bringing total cumulative funding to $33 million.

According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph on Tuesday, other investors in the company include 8VC, Samsung Next, SBI US Gateway Fund, Vertex Ventures, Hashed, HashKey Capital, Avalanche Foundation, LayerZero, Animoca Brands and more. In February, Kite launched the testnet of its AI-centric layer-1 blockchain, based on Avalanche (AVAX), aiming to enhance scalability and data processing while providing centralized coordination for artificial intelligence (AI) workflows.

Kite aims to leverage distributed infrastructure to power agentic AI infrastructure, envisioning AI agents as a new user category in the Web3 ecosystem. AI agents are autonomous software programs that can perceive their environment, make decisions, and take actions to achieve goals without constant human intervention.

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