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About Nevermined
Nevermined is a decentralized payment protocol designed specifically for AI agents, enabling machines to autonomously purchase digital goods and services without human intervention. Its core innovation is the x402 protocol, which turns the HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code into a machine-readable payment flow.
The main market pain point it solves is that AI agents can execute complex tasks but cannot pay for APIs, data, or compute resources on their own. Traditional payment methods require human interaction—filling out forms, entering card details, or approving transactions—which breaks the autonomy of AI workflows. Nevermined addresses this by giving agents persistent delegated spending authority, with guardrails such as budget limits, merchant restrictions, and time-based validity windows.
Its competitive edge lies in being framework-agnostic and integrating with existing payment infrastructure. Through partnerships with Visa Intelligent Commerce and VGS, Nevermined allows agents to make payments on existing card rails, while merchants can receive funds through their current providers like Stripe, without building new infrastructure. The system also ensures sensitive card data never touches the AI agent, using VGS's vaulting technology.
In the past six months (February to August 2026), Nevermined has made significant progress. In April 2026, it announced integration with Visa Intelligent Commerce and Coinbase's x402 protocol, enabling AI agents to autonomously purchase digital assets through existing payment networks. This integration allows merchants to monetize machine-driven traffic without technical barriers. The solution is already operational, supporting agents built with various AI frameworks, and has been adopted by platforms like Olas, where deployment time was reduced from six weeks to six hours. No major negative events have been reported in this period.
In July 2023, Nevermined completed a €3 million first-round financing co-led by Signature Ventures and Polymorphic Capital, initially focusing on Web3 digital asset infrastructure.
In January 2025, it raised $4 million in seed funding led by Generative Ventures, with participation from Polymorphic Capital, NEAR, and others, officially establishing its positioning as the "PayPal for AI" and building payment and settlement protocols for AI agents.
Through collaboration with Olas and other ecosystems, the deployment cycle for AI agent marketplace payments was reduced from six weeks to six hours, validating dynamic pricing and real-time settlement.
Long-term significance: Transitioning from Web3 infrastructure to the payment layer of the AI economy, enabling machine labor to be priced and traded.
In the past six months, Nevermined has made significant progress in AI agent payments.
In April, it integrated with Visa Intelligent Commerce, enabling AI agents to autonomously purchase digital goods via Visa cards, with user-defined rules such as budgets, per-purchase caps, and merchant restrictions. Meanwhile, Nevermined Pay was launched, allowing users to enroll credit cards and create payment mandates, with agents paying via the x402 protocol. Additionally, a partnership with Exa enabled AI agents to autonomously buy search access, making Exa the first infrastructure partner. Payment capabilities also expanded to support EUR and EURC multi-currency.
Official future priorities include agent-to-agent commerce, consumption-based pricing, cross-channel settlement (seamless switching between stablecoins and traditional payment rails), and decentralized identity for agents (verifiable credentials based on transaction history).
David Minarsch: Co-founder & CEO. PhD in Applied Game Theory from University of Cambridge. Led creation of first MAS framework in DLT space. Previously founded Valory and Olas.
Dimitri De Jonghe: Co-founder. PhD in microelectronic engineering from KULeuven. Co-founded ascribe and BigchainDB. Active in W3C Interledger community.
Josh Wadinski: Chief Revenue Officer. Experienced founder in web3/web2. Previously held strategy roles at Circle and Nevermined.