Circuit & Chisel, a company founded by two former Stripe employees, has successfully raised $19.2 million in Seed funding to develop a web-wide protocol for agent-initiated commerce.
The funding round was led by Primary Venture Partners and ParaFi Capital, with participation from Stripe, Coinbase Ventures, Solana Ventures, Samsung Next, and Polygon Labs. This capital will be utilized to launch ATXP, a protocol that empowers AI agents to manage the entire commerce lifecycle—from discovery to payment—without human intervention.
Circuit & Chisel is led by CEO Louis Amira, former head of crypto & AI partnerships at Stripe, and CTO David Noel-Romas, former head of crypto engineering at Stripe. The company is focused on building foundational technologies for agentic payments and online transactions, aligned with emerging standards like x402.
Amira stated, “We are on the cusp of a huge change in how the internet works. We expect significant advancements from AI agents in the coming years, but we lack the fundamental technologies that will allow them to thrive within safe, agreed-upon constraints and protocols.”
ATXP, the company’s initial release, will serve as a global protocol that facilitates low-cost micropayments between AI agents, where transactions are entirely orchestrated by intelligent systems.
Emily Man, Partner at Primary Venture Partners, remarked, “AI agents are increasingly navigating the web and transacting on our behalf, necessitating a completely new monetization infrastructure. ATXP enables instant, nested, delegated, and extremely low-cost micropayments between AI agents—capabilities that traditional payment systems cannot support.”