Sapiom raises $15M to help AI agents buy their own tech tools

People without coding backgrounds are discovering that they can build their own custom apps using vibe coding – solutions like Lovable that turn simple language descriptions into working code.

While these prompt-to-code tools can help create nice prototypes, putting them into full production (as this reporter recently discovered) can be tricky without figuring out how to connect the application to third-party tech services, such as those that can send text messages via SMS and email and process Stripe payments.

Ilan Zerbib, who was Shopify’s technical director for payments for five years, is building a solution that can eliminate these back-end infrastructure concerns for non-technical makers.

Zerbib was launched last summer Sapioma startup developing the financial layer that allows AI agents to securely purchase and use software, APIs, data, and computing power, essentially creating a payment system that allows AI to automatically purchase the services it needs.

Every time an AI agent connects to a third-party tool like Twilio for SMS, authentication and a micropayment are required. Sapiom’s goal is to make this entire process seamless, so that the AI ​​agent can decide what to buy and when, without human intervention.

“In the future, apps will use services that require payments. Right now, there’s no easy way for agents to actually access all of that,” said Amit Kumar, a partner at Accel.

Kumar has met dozens of AI payments startups, but he believes Zerbib’s focus on the financial layer for enterprises, rather than consumers, is what is really needed to make AI agents work. That’s why Accel is leading Sapiom’s $15 million seed round, with participation from Okta Ventures, Gradient Ventures, Array Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Anthropic and Coinbase Ventures.

“If you really think about it, every API call is a payment. Every time you send a text message, it’s a payment. Every time you spin up a server for AWS, it’s a payment,” Kumar told TechCrunch.

While it’s still early days for Sapiom, the startup hopes its infrastructure solution will be adopted by vibe-coding companies and other companies creating AI agents that will eventually be tasked with doing many things themselves.

For example, anyone who has coded an app with text messaging capabilities doesn’t have to manually sign up for Twilio, add a credit card, and copy an API key to their code. Instead, Sapiom handles all that in the background, and the person building the micro-app is charged by Lovable, Bolt, or another vibe coding platform for Twilio’s services as a pass-through fee.

While Sapiom is currently focused on B2B solutions, its technology could eventually enable personal AI agents to handle consumer transactions. The expectation is that one day individuals will trust agents to make independent financial decisions, such as ordering an Uber or shopping on Amazon. While that future is exciting, Zerbib believes AI won’t magically make people buy more things. That’s why he focuses instead on creating financial layers for companies.