A new beginning, Lava’s paymentThe purpose is to accept the payment jinn by making a solution for the modern web, where AI agents now handle transactions for their customers. The idea came to the founder Mitchell Jones when he left his first Y Combanest -backed Fantake Startup, Land Table, when he began experimenting with AI.
He saw the ability to develop a system that would make AI and agent payments easier and more developer friendly. While experiencing with the AI app and trying to build it, which was something easier, he realized that he quickly spent more than $ 400 while trying to build a basic form -filled agent.
“I kept participating in the same issue,” he told the Tech Crunch. “I was repeatedly using the same basic models and tools, but through different rapers or platforms.” And each time, it had to start a new membership, re -confirm, and pay separately, “though I was already paying access to the basic model.”
“He felt basically broken,” he added. “I didn’t want to complete access to the same thing under a different rapper. What I wanted was to move the same purse, a set of credit, and the ability to move between tools and providers without starting all the time so that I could pay for what I was using.”
He decided to start the lava payment as a solution.
Lava is a digital purse that allows traders to use the usage of Use usage ease of transaction.
The idea is that a collection of credit working in traders and services makes it easier for independent agents to pay without human intervention. It works like this: A merchant can enable its users to use lava purse and upload (credit) money. Jones said that once a user does this, they can take this money and use it on any trader who also accepts any basic model like lava and GPT and Claude, “Payments when you go on your basis.”
Therefore, instead of paying each device, the user buys a time -consuming credit that AI agents can easily charge when performing different tasks. No matter what the user has to approve the transaction after transaction.
“Without lava, agents cannot move easily through the Internet because when the time for payment comes, they are constantly blocked,” he said. He used Google as an example, saying that every time a person opens Google Maps, he does not need to pay Google for this map, as he has already paid Verizon and AT&T for Internet access.
On Wednesday, Startup announced 5.8 million seed rounds headed by Lerr Hippo.
Other people in this place include startups Metenom.
Jones said about it, “We see the world very interconnected.” “The thing we really focus is (for the agent) agent-local economy.”
Born in a working family in Ohio’s Daton, Jones said his parents had always told him the best way to move forward to work hard, save money and get good education.
“You know, many things that most people tell,” he remembered when talking with the technique.
Jones took this advice into the heart. He received a good education (Yale), some good jobs (Goldman, Meta), and then some companies (founded for the Fintex and Land Table, which was the latter YC S20).
Jones said he met his central investors for the lava because he went to high school with Will McClvie, who is now an investor in Lerr Hippo. He said that McClvi had been following his career for a while and always wanted to work together someday, and that the lava payment was someday.
Others in the round included Harlem Capital, Smooth Ventures and Westbounds. Fresh capital will be used to hire, build products, and develop market strategies.
Overall, Jones is “ready to become a hidden layer for Jones Lava that gives strength to the AI web,” he says, especially when the AI agent finds himself more and more in the checkout.
“We must enable agents to move, transfer and build without friction,” he said.
“We want to make sure that AI is something that every person, even a Daton’s baby can use like himself.”
The title of this piece was updated to properly show what the company does.