Nevermined is developing the "PayPal for AI" to enable seamless payments between AI agents, actively driving the transformation of all commercial landscape. Founded by ex Co-Founder and VP of Engineering at Ocean Protocol, Don Gossen (CEO) and Aitor Argomaniz (CTO), the company combines deep expertise in machine learning, AI, data, and Web3, the company. Its protocol is designed to address the unique challenges of AI-Commerce, where traditional rigid payment systems fall short.
The solution helps AI developers monetize their applications by managing payments, usage tracking, and credit systems - essentially acting as a finance and billing management platform for AI agents and tools. The first partnerships with key industry players including Olas, Naptha, peaq, FLock, and Combinder have already been signed.
"Current payment infrastructure was built for static transactions, like selling t-shirts on the internet, where the price of a small shirt doesn’t change over time," said Aitor Argomaniz, CTO of Nevermined. "AI agents are dynamic and require an equally dynamic payments system that can respond instantly to new requests. We’ve built the foundation already, and now we want to grow user adoption from both AI builders and AI agents."
Established in 2022, the startup has announced a capital increase by $4 million in a funding round led by Generative Ventures, with participation from Polymorphic Capital, NEAR, Halo Capital, Factor Capital, Lyrik Ventures and Arca. In addition, the round includes investment from notable AI luminaries, namely David Minarsch and Oak from Valory, the builders of Olas, Richard Blythman and Mark Schmidt from Naptha, and Ben Fielding from Gensyn.
The investment will be used to accelerate the go-to-market strategy, expand the team, and strengthen partnerships within the AI ecosystem. Nevermined is focused on building the essential financial infrastructure that will power the future economy of trillions of AI agents and scale AI-Commerce.
The investment comes at a crucial time, as McKinsey Global Institute predicts AI technologies could deliver additional economic output of $13 trillion by 2030. Nevermined aims to unlock this potential by enabling efficient monetization through variable pricing models and ensuring easy transactions between AI agents.
“The future of commerce isn’t just about humans trading with humans any more. It’s about AI agents transacting with other AI agents, and we need entirely new payment systems to facilitate that,” said Don Gossen, CEO of Nevermined. “This funding will allow us to accelerate our mission of building the financial rails for the emerging AI economy.”
(Press release/RAN)
The new Swiss Venture Capital Report was published on 26 January. It analyses 304 financing rounds closed in 2020 and includes further article such as an interview with Michael Hengartner, President of the ETH Board, and a list of Swiss "soonicorns". 
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