Natural

Natural (legal entity Natural AI, Inc.) is a San Francisco-based financial technology company building a payments stack designed for AI agents rather than human-initiated transactions. The company positions itself as an agent orchestration layer that lets agents hold and store funds, send and request payments, transact with businesses, consumers and other agents, and bill for their work. Natural says it operates the underlying primitives directly, including ledgering, money movement, multi-bank settlement, multi-currency support, fraud and compliance, and agent identity and observability. It is a financial technology company, not a bank: wallet accounts and banking services are provided by Column N.A., Member FDIC, with pass-through FDIC insurance through Column's sweep program network banks.

The product line is delivered through a single unified API, with access via MCP server, CLI, SDK (@naturalpay/sdk) and REST endpoints. Natural has described a roadmap of 13 products. As of the July 2026 Series A announcement, six were generally available: Wallets (FDIC-insured agent accounts), Vaults (one-way accounts agents can pay into but not out of), Pay, Request, Transfer, and Connect (for platforms and marketplaces). Voice (collecting PCI card data over the phone), Accept (turning agents into merchants) and Cards (debit and charge card issuing for agents) were said to be rolling out over the following months, with Charge (per-API-call billing), Credit (lines of credit for agents), Direct (runtime selection of specific payment rails) and Billing (success-based billing) planned for Q4. Natural also markets managed dispute mediation, agent identities tied back to verifiable legal identities, and full auditability of agent actions.

Founding story

Co-founder and CEO Kahlil Lalji concluded about a year before the Series A that AI agents were evolving faster than existing financial architecture, which could not support agents autonomously paying vendors, collecting payments or transacting with one another. Lalji, who has a banking and finance background, had hoped to avoid the sector after his prior Y Combinator-backed startup Ivella — a banking and financial product for couples — was sold to Earnin in 2023, where he then spent two years as an engineer, but said he kept returning to agentic payments as a structurally important problem. He teamed up with Eric Wang, his Ivella co-founder, and Walt Leung, a former engineering manager at Nextdoor, to found Natural in 2025.

Business model

Natural sells payments and banking infrastructure to companies that deploy AI agents, offered as API-based primitives (wallets, payments, transfers, cards, credit, billing, voice) that developers integrate into their own agent products. Wallet and banking functions are delivered through a bank partner, Column N.A.

Traction

Natural operated in a beta trial until the July 2026 Series A, at which point six of a planned 13 products reached general availability. Headcount grew from 10 in March 2026 to 17 in July 2026, with aggressive hiring across functions; the company says it has recruited senior staff from Stripe, Ramp and Square. Disclosed funding totals more than $40 million.

Latest developments

On 2026-07-20 Natural announced a $30 million Series A led by Kirsten Green at Forerunner with continued participation from existing investors, bringing total funding above $40 million, and moved Wallets, Vaults, Pay, Request, Transfer and Connect to general availability, with Voice, Accept and Cards next and Charge, Credit, Direct and Billing slated for Q4. A press-release index also lists subsequent announcements of a credit facility of up to $100 million from Upper90 and the appointment of a Chief Compliance and Regulatory Officer.