Gokite
San Francisco, US · 28 employees on LinkedIn · 12 known investors
Kite builds payment infrastructure for an "agent-native" web, providing autonomous AI agents with verifiable identity, programmable governance, and stablecoin-based settlement. It targets developers and businesses deploying autonomous agents that transact and operate independently.
Also known as GoKite · GoKite.ai · Kite · Kite AI · Zettablock
Founders & leadership
Investors · 12
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Also in the syndicate · 6
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Kite, operating at gokite.ai and formerly known as Zettablock, builds infrastructure intended to let autonomous AI agents authenticate, transact and operate without a human approving each action. Its stack is described in three parts: an agent interface layer for building, deploying and composing agent workflows across SDKs and services; Kite Agent Passport, which gives an agent a cryptographic identity, a funded wallet, user-defined spending rules and verifiable receipts; and Kite Chain, a high-throughput settlement blockchain with sub-second deterministic finality, full EVM compatibility, low fees, dedicated agent pay lanes and native cross-chain messaging.
In the Passport model, a user holds a single account with shared funds, and each agent (for example Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor) operates through time-boxed sessions with their own rules and quotas; a session is approved once with a single signature rather than per transaction. Each payment links back through session, agent and user, with an immutable on-chain receipt, and sessions are bound to decentralized identifiers using ephemeral keys so an agent can prove authorization by a verified human without revealing identity. Developer documentation covers obtaining a Passport, funding a wallet with USDC, a CLI (kpass/ksearch), and a service provider guide for merchants receiving agent payments; Passport is also exposed at agentpassport.ai.
The company's September 2025 announcement described Kite Agent Identity Resolution ("Kite AIR"), consisting of Agent Passport (verifiable identity with operational guardrails) and an Agent App Store where agents discover and pay for services such as APIs, data and commerce tools. A secondary exchange-education source additionally characterizes the network as a sovereign Layer 1 built with Avalanche subnet architecture using a "Proof of Attributed Intelligence" consensus that rewards data providers, model developers and agents, and references a KITE token; that source is a market-education page and its claims are less firmly established than the company's own materials.
Founding story
A secondary source states the company was founded in 2023 by Chi Zhang and Scott Shi. Chi Zhang (Co-founder and CEO) holds a PhD in AI from UC Berkeley and led core data products at Databricks, with prior roles at dotData and Gilead Sciences; Scott Shi (Co-founder and CTO) has a master's from UIUC, built real-time AI infrastructure at Uber and was a founding engineer on Salesforce Einstein AI, and co-founded the streaming data platform RisingWave.
Business model
Kite supplies infrastructure rather than an end-user application: an agent identity and permissioning product (Agent Passport), a discovery marketplace for agent-accessible services (Agent App Store), and a settlement blockchain on which agent payments are executed in stablecoins. Sources describe low or near-zero transaction fees on the chain, but do not state pricing, take rates or how the company monetizes the stack.
Traction
The company states Kite Mainnet is live and that Kite AIR is live through open integrations with Shopify and PayPal. Public GitHub activity includes sample dApps, chain and docs repositories with modest star counts, and third-party testnet automation scripts indicate an incentivized testnet with referral and XP mechanics. No user, transaction or revenue figures are disclosed in the sources.
Latest developments
The company's website announces that Kite Mainnet is live and promotes Agent Passport and building on Kite Chain, alongside whitepapers including a Korean translation and a MiCAR whitepaper. Developer documentation covers Passport setup, USDC wallet funding and a service provider guide. A November 2025 exchange education page reports a Series A extension led by PayPal Ventures, General Catalyst and Coinbase Ventures taking total funding above $33 million, and lists partnerships spanning Shopify, Amazon, Avalanche, Coinbase (x402), LayerZero, Chainlink, Story Protocol and EigenLayer; these partnership claims appear only in that secondary source.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Positioned as trust and payments infrastructure for the "agentic web," with backing from payments and crypto-oriented investors including PayPal Ventures, General Catalyst, Coinbase Ventures, 8VC, Samsung Next and others. One secondary source characterizes it as among the best-capitalized AI blockchain infrastructure startups and calls it the first AI payment blockchain; that framing comes from an exchange education page rather than an independent analyst.
The company's stated differentiators are agent-native rather than human-centric authorization: identity for agents, one-time session approval instead of per-transaction signatures, programmable budgets and scope, verifiable per-action receipts and instant revocation, combined with stablecoin settlement that avoids the latency, fees and chargeback exposure the Series A announcement attributes to card-based workarounds.
Technology
Kite Chain is described as a high-throughput, EVM-compatible blockchain with sub-second deterministic finality, native stablecoin settlement, low fees, dedicated agent pay lanes and native cross-chain messaging; a secondary source states it is a sovereign Layer 1 implemented as an Avalanche subnet, consistent with the company's public forks of avalanchego, subnet-evm, avalanche-cli and an Avalanche faucet. The Passport layer uses cryptographic agent identities, decentralized identifiers, ephemeral session keys, time-boxed scoped sessions with quotas, on-chain immutable receipts and an auditable chain of proof from intent to execution to payment. Tooling includes a kpass/ksearch CLI, developer docs, an A2A coordination extension and Passport Skills repositories.
Go-to-market
Distribution runs through developers and commerce platforms. Documentation, SDKs, sample dApps and a public GitHub organization support developer onboarding, while merchant reach comes from integrations: the company states that any PayPal or Shopify merchant can opt in via the Kite Agent App Store using publicly available APIs to become discoverable to AI shopping agents. A testnet with account registration and agent interactions has also drawn third-party automation scripts oriented to airdrop farming.
Developers building autonomous agents, operators of AI assistants that need to pay for services, and service providers or merchants (for example PayPal and Shopify sellers) that want to accept agent-initiated payments. End users are individuals who delegate spending to agents under budgets and permissions they set.
Geography
Headquartered in San Francisco, United States, per the Series A press release dateline. The broader team is described as including engineers and researchers from Uber, Databricks, Salesforce and NEAR with academic roots at UC Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Oxford and the University of Tokyo; no other offices are named.
History
Kite was formerly known as Zettablock, a team that built large-scale, real-time data infrastructure serving decentralized networks including Sui, Polygon, Chainlink and EigenLayer, and rebuilt on that foundation to serve agents. It launched Kite Agent Identity Resolution (Agent Passport and Agent App Store) shortly before announcing an $18 million Series A on 2 September 2025 that brought cumulative funding to $33 million. The company's site subsequently reported that Kite Mainnet is live.
Risks & controversies
Third-party GitHub scripts automate mass wallet generation, referral-based registration and agent interactions on the Kite testnet to farm daily XP for an anticipated airdrop, indicating that testnet engagement metrics may be inflated by Sybil activity. Funding, partnership and tokenomics details reported by exchange education content differ in granularity from the company's own primary announcement and should be treated as unverified. No litigation or regulatory actions are reported in the sources.
Compiled by commissioned research from 6 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 5
launches, deals, and filingsKite announced an $18 million Series A led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst, bringing total cumulative funding to $33 million.
$18M source ↗
The Series A announcement states Kite was formerly known as Zettablock, a team that built real-time data infrastructure for networks including Sui, Polygon, Chainlink and EigenLayer.
PayPal and Shopify merchants can opt in through the Kite Agent App Store using publicly available APIs to become discoverable to AI shopping agents, with purchases settled on-chain in stablecoins.
Kite launched Kite AIR, comprising Agent Passport (verifiable agent identity with operational guardrails) and Agent App Store (service discovery and payment), described as live through open integrations with Shopify and PayPal.
The company's website announces that Kite Mainnet is live, alongside Agent Passport and Kite Chain availability for builders.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 6
primary sources listed
- Gokitegokite.ai · web
6 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Gokite do?
- Kite (gokite.ai) builds an agent-focused identity, payments and settlement layer with a purpose-built EVM-compatible blockchain.
- Who founded Gokite?
- Gokite was founded by Scott Shi.
- Who are Gokite's investors?
- Gokite's investors include Coinbase Ventures, 8VC, General Catalyst, RR2 Capital, Samsung Next, Essence Venture Capital.
- Where is Gokite headquartered?
- Gokite is headquartered in San Francisco, US.