Lava, a San Francisco-based payments startup, has raised $5.8 million in seed funding to launch a universal digital wallet built for the AI-first internet.
The round was led by Lerer Hippeau, with participation from Harlem Capital, Streamlined Ventures, and Westbound.
Infrastructure for autonomous agent transactions
Founded by Mitchell Jones, a serial fintech entrepreneur and Y Combinator alum, Lava aims to simplify payments for AI agents — autonomous tools and bots that perform tasks on behalf of users.
Jones came up with the idea while building an AI agent and hitting repeated friction with payments: having to authenticate and pay for the same AI tools via multiple platforms and subscriptions.
“I didn’t want to keep rebuying access to the same model under different wrappers,” said Jones. “What I wanted was a single wallet, one set of credits, and the ability to move between tools seamlessly.”
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Lava wallet: a shared credit layer for the AI web
Lava is building a developer-friendly billing platform where one wallet of prepaid credits can be used across any tool or merchant in the Lava network — including foundational AI models like GPT, Claude, and others.
Merchants can integrate Lava to allow agents to transact on behalf of users without triggering repetitive approval requests. The model supports a “pay-as-you-go” system for usage-based pricing, eliminating barriers to multi-tool workflows.
“Without something like Lava, AI agents stall out at the checkout step,” Jones explained. “We’re building the invisible payments layer that enables fluid AI-native experiences.”
From fintech to frictionless automation
Jones previously co-founded Parable and Lendtable (YC S20), and held roles at Meta and Goldman Sachs. He was inspired to build Lava after realizing the lack of cohesive payments infrastructure for emerging agent workflows.
The company’s investors include Harlem Capital and longtime friend Will McKelvey, now at Lerer Hippeau, who backed Jones after tracking his entrepreneurial journey for years.
The seed funding will be used to:
- Hire engineering and product talent
- Launch go-to-market pilots with early partners
- Build developer APIs and SDKs for agent-based tools
A platform for the “agent-native” future
As more apps adopt agentic interfaces — tools that think and act on a user’s behalf — Lava positions itself as the financial backbone of AI automation.
“We want AI to be usable by everyone,” said Jones. “Even a kid from Dayton, Ohio — like me.”
