Skyfire Raises $9.5m to Build AI Payment Networ

Coinbase Ventures and a16z’s Crypto Startup Accelerator led a $9.5 million Seed fundraising round for Skyfire, a payments platform created by former Ripple developers. 

According to a press statement, the company’s primary focus is developing a payment infrastructure for AI agents—software programs that can make decisions and conduct transactions independently.

Using USDC or conventional banking systems, Skyfire’s payment network enables AI agents to handle transactions without human intervention.

This invention serves the expanding AI agent economy, which uses agents in a number of sectors, including online retail and financial services.

By giving agents secure wallet access and verifiable identities, Skyfire makes fully autonomous payments possible.

Low-cost payment rails for all Agent payments are now possible because to Skyfire’s integration with Base, the Ethereum layer 2 blockchain that Coinbase is incubating.

This integration comes at the same time as Coinbase Ventures invested in Skyfire, and the a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator provided funding. With this, Skyfire now has a total investment of $9.5 million. 

What are AI agents? 

For those unfamiliar with AI agents, these systems work similarly to virtual workers, carrying out duties, coming to conclusions, and in this instance, collecting payments for services.

Skyfire enables these agents to carry out transactions without requiring human supervision by serving as the infrastructure.

Enterprise clients find this configuration appealing since it allows for smooth transactions at a significantly lower cost.