Why Agents Need a New Payment Stack - and Why Nekuda is Building It

I am thrilled to share Madrona’s investment in Nekuda, payment rails for AI Agents, together with our friends at Amex Ventures, Visa Ventures, and wildly helpful angels like Paul Klein, Shyamal Anandkat, and Sahar Mor. Here’s why we did it:

AI agents aren’t magic. They’re far from universally reliable. But in the right place, at the right time — they feel magical. And when they do, they can unlock completely new kinds of productivity.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m enthusiastic about agents — and I’ve written extensively (here, here, here, here, and elsewhere) about why I believe they’re among the most important software shifts of this decade. But they’re not a universal unlock. Not yet.

That’s especially true for the agent economy — one of the most promising and consequential applications of AI agents. We all see the potential of intelligent agents autonomously conducting transactions, from discovery to decision to purchase. But we also see deep technical and practical hurdles that need to be cleared before that vision can be fully realized.

The founders who solve this will have an outsized impact on the next era of transactions. Because autonomous commerce doesn’t just require smarter agents — it requires a fundamentally new infrastructure for trust, permissions, and payments.

How the Agent Economy Will Happen

We’ve now entered a new era of agentic software. It’s tempting to dismiss the hype, but doing so misses the point. “Agents” aren’t a gimmick — they’re the name and the form factor of a new generation of applications powered by reasoning models. This is real and already here. Just one (important) example - ChatGPT reportedly has over 800 million daily users — that’s one in ten humans on Earth using an agent every single day.

That wave of applications comes with coevolution of infrastructure. The apps and infra each drive the other forward.

At Madrona, we’ve spent the past 18 months investing and supporting founders building agents and the stack that supports them. It is clear to us that agents will reshape not just how we build software, but also how money moves through it. That’s why we’re so excited to back Nekuda, the payment stack for AI agents.

A Pattern Repeating: New Platforms Reshape Commerce

Each time the computing paradigm shifts — from the web to mobile to social to cloud — it redefines how purchases happen. The result? Entire new financial platforms are born. PayPal rode the rise of the internet. Stripe and Plaid emerged from the growth of APIs, creator commerce, and open banking. Apple Pay came with mobile.

Now it’s happening again.

Visa recently reported a 1,200% year-over-year increase in traffic to retail sites from AI agents. That scale of growth is reminiscent of early internet days — and it’s only the beginning. Today, when ChatGPT recommends a pair of sneakers, it links you to a checkout page. But that’s just a workaround. A transitional interface. What if I want an agent to not just suggest a product, but to search, refine, and purchase on my behalf?

That’s when today’s systems break down.

Agents that try to transact like humans risk getting flagged as bots. Because… they are bots. The current financial infrastructure isn’t built for “card not present, human not present” transactions. That’s the opportunity.

An Unlock for the Agent Economy’s GDP: Enter Nekuda

Nekuda is building the payment stack for AI agents. Their platform enables agents to transact with built-in authentication, guardrails, and compliance, enforced all the way down to the payment networks.

This creates a critical new layer of trust:

Trust for consumers, who can delegate authority to agents with confidence that those agents will act only within clearly defined limits — “buy this if it drops below $500,” or “book Delta flight 446 but nothing else.”

Trust for developers, who can build powerful agentic workflows without getting flagged as fraud or risking catastrophic misfires — no 10,000 sneaker orders.

Trust for networks, which now have the primitives they need to recognize, process, and authorize agent-driven transactions with confidence.

This isn’t just a technical breakthrough. It’s an unlock for the agent economy’s GDP. Because agents must become trustworthy before they can become trusted. And when they are, they’ll be able to take on real, valuable work — buying, booking, sourcing, and transacting — at scale.

Real Demand, Right Now

Nekuda’s vision is bold, but it’s not speculative. We were drawn to the urgency and clarity of the founding team, and the speed at which they are building. Since we invested, Nekuda has added Amex Ventures and Visa Ventures as investors, along with key angels like Paul Klein (Browserbase), Sahar Mor (ex-Stripe), and Shyamal Anandkat (OpenAI). That’s deep credibility across agent infra and payments.

Most importantly, Nekuda are a launch partner for Visa Intelligent Commerce, Visa’s new initiative to extend their network to AI-driven transactions. We expect more collaborations like this in the near future.

Why We’re Excited

At Madrona, we’ve been looking to back the foundational infrastructure for the agent economy. In June 2024, we published a deep dive into the emerging agent stack, and followed it with continued investment up and down the stack. Nekuda is a key missing piece — the trust layer that lets agents actually do things.

It’s also a perfect example of our belief that infrastructure and applications evolve together. The demand is repidly materializing. The agents are already active. And Nekuda is responding to that reality by building the rails that make agent-driven transactions safe, trusted, and scalable.

We’re thrilled to support Ayal, Idan, Barak, and the entire Nekuda team as they accelerate the future of commerce. Their work won’t just make agents smarter — it will make them economically powerful.

Let’s build it together.

You can start building agents with Nekuda today! To learn more and access the SDK visit Ayal’s blog here, and Nekuda.ai.

There is SO MUCH opportunity in and around the agent economy. If you’re building in this space we’d love to hear from you at jonturow@madrona.com.