Most AI startups face a stubborn paradox. Their compute costs swing wildly based on usage, but their billing systems force them into fixed monthly fees. London-based Paygentic just raised €1.8M to solve this mismatch with AI billing infrastructure built for outcome-based pricing. The pre-seed round positions the startup to capture a market where AI-native companies now generate over $15 billion in annual revenue.
MiddleGame Ventures led the funding, joined by Anamcara Capital, Aperture Capital, Angel Invest, and Alan Morgan, chairman at Adfisco. The capital will scale Paygentic’s team and accelerate product development to support hybrid billing models that traditional payment systems can’t handle.
Why AI Billing Infrastructure Needs a Complete Rethink
Co-founders Susan O’Neill and Samuel Alarco Cantos built Paygentic after watching AI founders struggle with rigid legacy systems. O’Neill, who previously founded payment infrastructure provider Sulu, saw how inflexible financial tools killed promising innovations. Alarco, a former Google engineer, kept hitting walls with billing platforms that couldn’t support usage-based models.
“Traditional billing solutions break the moment things get complex,” O’Neill explains. “AI founders lack the flexible infrastructure needed to price and monetize their products effectively. Our platform lets AI companies charge for what actually matters and scale as fast as they innovate.”
The timing matters. AI-native businesses generate value dynamically through model inference and API consumption, but most payment systems were designed for static monthly subscriptions. Paygentic’s agent-first stack converts AI actions into billable events, whether that’s prompt execution, outcome success, or usage volume. Early adopter ChaseLabs uses the platform to charge only when its AI sales representatives generate qualified leads.
Building Financial Plumbing for the Agentic Economy
Kanishk Walia, partner at MiddleGame Ventures, frames Paygentic as foundational infrastructure for a new economic model. “AI-native products are redefining how value is created and delivered, yet legacy billing and payments systems can’t keep up,” he says. “Paygentic has built an agent-first stack that makes it possible to monetize usage, outcomes, and hybrid models at scale.”
The platform combines billing, payments, and pricing logic in one system designed for developers. Teams can launch outcome-based, usage-based, or subscription models without building custom infrastructure. This matters in a market where AI companies need to experiment quickly with pricing strategies that reflect their actual value delivery.
Paygentic emerged from stealth in October 2025 after working with select early adopters since early in the year. The startup now opens its platform to any AI-native business, from LLM infrastructure providers to agent frameworks and development tools. With European fintech expertise and a San Francisco presence, Paygentic aims to become what investors call “the financial plumbing for the agentic era.”