AEON Raises $8 Million in Pre-Seed Funding to Build Payments Layer for AI Agents

AEON, a payments infrastructure startup focused on the AI agent economy, has raised $8 million in a pre-seed funding round.

The Block reported on May 18 that AEON completed the round with YZi Labs leading the investment. Other participants included IDG Capital, HashKey Capital, Stanford Blockchain Builders Fund and Oak Grove Ventures. The funding structure and valuation were not disclosed.

AEON is developing a settlement layer to support interactions between AI agents. It said the new capital will be used to build financial infrastructure for an agent-centric economy.

The company launched its first AI payments product in May. The service is designed to connect AI agents to more than 50 million offline merchants worldwide.

AEON also partnered with BNB Chain to launch x402 Facilitator. The company said the solution runs on BNB Chain infrastructure and provides verifiable transaction records, on-chain settlement and immutable receipts.

AEON co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Eddie Li said a new economic structure, shaped by expanding value exchange among autonomous agents, requires financial infrastructure built for that model. The funding will help accelerate development of its AI-based settlement layer and strengthen collaboration with ecosystem partners including Coinbase and BNB Chain, he added.

Infrastructure related to AI agents has recently emerged as a new investment theme in the crypto industry.