Nekuda, a NYC-based startup building infrastructure for agentic payments, raised $5M in funding.
The round was led by Madrona Ventures with participation Amex Ventures and Visa Ventures, Paul Klein, CEO of Browserbase, Shyamal Hitesh Anadkat, Applied AI at OpenAI and Sahar Mor.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate its operations and development efforts.
Led by CEO Ayal Karmi, Nekuda provides an infrastructure that helps agents handle payment credentials securely, execute transactions, and capture user intent with transparent mandates.
Its SDK brings agent-driven transactions into the existing payment ecosystem without requiring a full overhaul. It’s built around two core pillars:
- Secure Agent Wallet – Users can delegate payment credentials to an AI agent in a safe, compliant way. The agent can store and inject payment details securely at checkout, ensuring it can complete transactions autonomously without constantly asking for a human’s input.
- Agentic Mandates – Nekuda’s authorization layer captures rich, contextual signals about user purchasing intent—what the agent is allowed to buy, under which conditions, with spending limits or required approvals.
With the launch of Visa Intelligent Commerce late last month, Visa is providing the underlying payments infrastructure to allow for broader AI agent integration across verticals and industries. As part of the partnership, Nekuda expects to integrate its AI payment stack toVisa Intelligent Commerce infrastructure designed to enable fast, authenticated agent payments with high authorization rates, to help ensure every transaction is secure and user-intended.
FinSMEs
14/05/2025