DCVC

Natural Raises $30M to Reinvent AI Agent Payments

Natural, a startup founded in 2025, raised $30 million in a Series A led by Forerunner to build payment infrastructure designed for autonomous AI agents. The company — founded by Kahlil Lalji with Eric Wang and Walt Leung — describes itself as an agent orchestration layer enabling agents to move and store funds, make autonomous payments, and handle disputes. Natural has operated in beta and plans to support both traditional bank payments and stablecoins. The round brings the company’s total funding to $40 million and positions Natural as a direct competitor to incumbents such as Stripe while other startups (e.g., DCVC-backed Skyfire Systems) explore stablecoin-based rails.

Metamarkets Raises $15M, Investors Include John Battelle And LiveRamp’s Auren Hoffman

Metamarkets has raised $15 million in a funding round led by Data Collective, with John Battelle, LiveRamp founder Auren Hoffman, and City National Bank joining as new investors. Existing backers Khosla Ventures, IA Ventures, True Ventures, and Village Ventures also participated, bringing total funding to $43.5 million. CEO Mike Driscoll, who is a partner at Data Collective, said the proceeds will fund growth. Metamarkets provides a real-time analytics platform for programmatic buyers, sellers, and exchanges, and works with data streams from exchanges without pooling client data. Its system combines a time-series database (Druid) with an interactive visualization tool (Facet). The company has doubled its client base and tripled YoY revenues and plans to scale infrastructure, expand the engineering team, and strengthen native and video capabilities, with potential for mobile data streams. Clients include OpenX, MoPub, Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, Millennial Media, and Financial Times.