Quick take:
- The fundraising brings the total raised by Kite to $33 million, following a previously undisclosed seed round.
- The company plans to use the fresh capital to accelerate the development of its decentralised infrastructure for AI agents.
- Co-founder and CEO of Kite, Chi Zhang, envisions an internet where AI agents interact with each other without humans in between.
Decentralised AI startup, Kite, has raised $18 million in a Series A round co-led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst. The fundraising also attracted participation from 8VC, Samsung Next, and Alumni Ventures, among others.
According to the report by Fortune, the latest round brings the total raised to $33 million, following a previously undisclosed Seed round. Kite plans to use the fresh capital to accelerate the development of its infrastructure for AI agents.
Co-founded by CEO Chi Zhang, the company is building a platform based on the vision where AI agents interact with each other without humans in between.
“The normal way for us to do shopping at the moment is we go to the Amazon website or Shopify store and shop across the store, find the products,” Zhang told Fortune. “But in the future, it’s all going to be automated. So we won’t need to leave, let’s say, Perplexity, or ChatGPT.”
Commenting on his firm’s leading role in the funding, Alan Du, a partner at PayPal Ventures, said: “If you look at the agentic level of activities, it’s been, I would say, very small and experimental in nature. I think there’s a lot more infrastructure level building that still needs to happen in order for agents to truly become the transformative force that it’s sort of destined for.”
The announcement comes amid growing interest in projects being built at the intersection of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, several companies, including Google, Meta, and X (formerly Twitter), have also joined the race to build their own versions of AI chatbots.
But others like Kite are looking to tap into the power of blockchain technology to build decentralised AI infrastructures, powered by their communities.
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The post PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst Co-lead $18M Funding for Crypto AI Startup Kite appeared first on NFTgators.