You can now tell an AI to write code for a website, and it will often do a decent job. But the moment that website needs to send a text message or charge a credit card, the process breaks down. You suddenly have to stop, open a corporate bank account, sign up for a vendor, and paste secret keys into a file. Ilan Zerbib thinks that friction is ridiculous.
Key Takeaways
- Sapiom raised $15 million in a seed round led by Accel.
- Former Shopify engineering director Ilan Zerbib founded the startup to automate AI agent payments.
- Investors include Okta Ventures, Gradient Ventures, Array Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Anthropic, and Coinbase Ventures.
Zerbib, formerly a director of engineering at Shopify, launched Sapiom to solve this specific headache. The startup recently raised $15 million to build what they call a financial layer for AI.
The goal is to let software pay for other software without a human needing to pull out a credit card every time. As AI agents become more common, they will need to buy access to data, server space, or communication tools to do their jobs. Sapiom wants to be the invisible wallet that makes those transactions happen.
The big deal
We are seeing a rise in “vibe coding,” where non-technical people use plain language to build apps. Tools like Lovable can generate the interface, but they struggle with the plumbing. Connecting an app to the real world usually requires setting up accounts with multiple service providers. This manual work defeats the purpose of instant app creation.
If Sapiom works, it removes the administrative wall. A creator could describe an app that sends SMS alerts, and the AI would handle the setup and billing for the messaging service automatically. This shifts the economy of software from monthly subscriptions to micro-payments. Every time an app sends a text or rents a server, it pays a tiny fee instantly.
How it works
Sapiom acts as a secure middleman between your AI agent and the services it needs to use.
Think of it like giving a general contractor a pre-paid expense card to renovate your kitchen. They can buy lumber, nails, and paint as they need them without calling you to ask for your credit card number at every checkout counter.
In this scenario, the “contractor” is the AI. When the AI needs to use an external tool—like Twilio for text messages—Sapiom handles the login and the payment in the background. The AI decides what it needs to buy to finish the job, and the transaction clears automatically. You, the human owner, just see the final bill passed through the platform you are using.
The catch
The biggest hurdle here is trust. Giving autonomous software the ability to spend money carries obvious risks. If an agent goes rogue or gets stuck in a loop, it could theoretically rack up a massive bill very quickly. The system relies heavily on strict authentication and permissions to ensure the AI only buys what it is supposed to.
This is also strictly for businesses right now. The technology is designed for enterprise infrastructure, not for personal assistants. You cannot use this yet to have an AI buy your groceries or order a car. Zerbib notes that AI will not magically make consumers buy more goods, so the company is focusing entirely on the backend plumbing for software companies.
What now?
Sapiom is using its new funding to build out this infrastructure. The immediate target is “vibe-coding” platforms and other B2B tools.
If you use tools like Lovable or Bolt to build software, you may soon see options to add paid features without leaving the interface. Instead of signing up for third-party services manually, the platform will likely charge you a pass-through fee for whatever services your AI agent uses. Watch to see which major AI development platforms integrate this payment layer first.