Why We Invested in Circuit & Chisel: The Payments Unlock for an Agentic Web
Agents are fundamentally breaking the business model of the web. Internet traffic is undergoing a massive shift – away from human visitors to scrapers, bots, and agents. In some cases, bots are visiting a webpage 60,000 times for each visitor they refer. It’s clear that ads that rely on human attention are no longer going to cut it.
As AI agents continue to get smarter and more sophisticated, we’re clearly rapidly entering an era where we see a cambrian explosion of AI agents across verticals that are discovering services, making decisions, and coordinating with other agent based services.
If only they had a way to pay and get paid.
Enter Circuit & Chisel
Circuit & Chisel is building the payments infrastructure that will power the emerging AI agent economy. Its ATXP enables instant, nested, delegated, and extremely low cost micropayments between AI agents — something that today’s traditional payment rails are structurally unable to support.
While there’s plenty of digital payments options available today, they suffer from a goldilocks problem: none of them are just quite right for what the emerging agentic ecosystem needs. Digital card rails? Great for large ticket transactions, too expensive for small ones. Subscriptions? Doesn’t align with the cost structure of delivering agentic services. We’ve yet to have the “app store” moment of the agentic era. ATXP is that missing link.
ATXP makes it easy to embed functionality into any Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that enables agents to:
- Discover and pay for tools and services independently
- Manage complex, multi-party transactions
- Delegate payment decision making up the chain when necessary
But don’t take our word for it – check out their docs and start building here.
Two Major Tailwinds on a Collision Course
Many of these themes are ones that have been explored on and off at different points along the history of the internet. Today however, we’re seeing the convergence of two massive tailwinds: 1) the rise of the agentic economy and 2) stablecoins going mainstream.
With $240 billion in circulation and regulatory clarity now arriving via the GENIUS Act in the U.S. and MiCA in the EU, stablecoins have emerged as a modern alternative to card networks. Adoption by traditional financial institutions is off to a blistering pace, lighting up new nodes on a global network quickly. As the ecosystem matures and costs of transacting have dropped, stablecoins have become the ideal medium for high-velocity, small ticket payments that don’t make sense to run over traditional card or ACH rails.
This ecosystem is developing at a breakneck pace with many existing and emerging players all vying to be the underlying medium of transacting. ATXP is designed to support multiple payment methods and blockchains out of the gate, abstracting away the messiness of figuring out the right pathway to transacting into a simple SDK.
Meet the Founders: Stripe Crypto’s Skunkworks Breakout
The ability to deeply understand and expertly traverse three domains – AI developer tooling, traditional payments, and stablecoin infrastructure — is exceedingly rare. The team, led by Louis Amira and David Noël-Romas, brings the perfect combination of traditional fintech experience coupled with unique insights into this nascent space.
Louis and David worked together at Stripe spearheading crypto and AI efforts through the volatilities of the last crypto cycle. Louis, as the company’s first external crypto hire, was tasked with evolving Stripe’s financial infrastructure and spearheaded crypto and AI ecosystem partnerships. David, as Head of Engineering for Stripe Crypto, was the brain behind many of Stripe’s core crypto infrastructure initiatives. From our first meeting, it was exceedingly clear that they had years worth of earned insights and knowledge on exactly how to architect a solution that would bridge the gaps that exist in the landscape today.
Why We Backed Circuit & Chisel
We’re backing Circuit & Chisel because we believe in a future where AI agents transact autonomously on behalf of people, companies, and each other. Louis and David have seen the gaps in traditional payments up close. They know how to earn trust in regulated environments, scale developer ecosystems, and move quickly in crypto-native communities. They’re not just shipping product — they’re imagining and shaping the future of commerce and payments.
We’re thrilled to be partnering with them on this journey alongside our friends at ParaFi. If the future of the internet runs on AI agents, Circuit & Chisel will be the proverbial wallet in their pockets.