AI infrastructure firm Paid raises £15.7m led by Lightspeed with EQT Ventures
At a glance
This article covers an oversubscribed Seed round on 29 September 2025 for Paid, the company building critical infrastructure to grow the AI agent economy, founded by Manny Medina. The round raised £15.7m and was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from FUSE.
What does Paid do?
Paid is a business platform that provides economic infrastructure for AI agent work and SaaS-to-agent monetisation. It enables companies to monetise agent activity using outcome-based pricing, real-time cost tracking, billing and dashboards.
Why is Paid useful?
Problem
People using AI agents cannot price, track, or monetise digital workers with traditional per-seat enterprise software models. Without proper economic infrastructure, businesses struggle to capture value and scale agent-driven services.
Solution
Paid explains that it provides a business system that creates economic rails to price, track, and monetise AI agent work. The platform offers outcome-based pricing, true cost tracking, ROI portals and BI dashboards for agent-first companies.
How much did Paid raise?
Paid raised an oversubscribed £15.7m ($21.6m) Seed round, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners alongside new investor FUSE. This brings total funding to £24.2m ($33.3m). This makes it the 21st largest funding round in September 2025 (58 recorded). It ranks 107th of the year (465 recorded) in the Startupmag database, as of 29 September 2025.
For details on how Startupmag compiles its rankings, view our Methodology.
Who invested in Paid?
The key investors in the round include the following.
- Lightspeed Venture Partners: A global venture capital firm that invests across enterprise and consumer technology companies at early and growth stages.
- FUSE: A venture investor focusing on technology startups and early-stage opportunities.
- EQT Ventures: A Europe-focused venture capital firm that backs technology companies at early and growth stages.
In the funding announcement, Alexander Schmitt from Lightspeed Venture Partners said:
The AI era demands a fundamental rethinking of how software creates and captures value. As AI agents become an important form of digital labor, Paid's infrastructure will be as essential as payment rails were for e-commerce.
The investor said they view Paid as building the economic foundation for the next era of work.
If you're researching potential backers in this space:
- Explore our list of AI venture capital firms in the UK
- Browse our directory of AI angel investors in the UK
Who founded Paid?
Manny Medina is the founder of Paid.
In the funding announcement, Manny Medina said:
We're witnessing the biggest inflection point in SaaS since the transition from on-premise to cloud, Companies are turning to AI agents as their path back to sustainable growth, but today's infrastructure wasn't built for an agent-first world.
The company continued that the traditional 'per seat' model of paying for software does not make sense when the software is eliminating seats, that a new pricing model is required, and that Paid is building a foundation to support the AI agent economy and help companies navigate the transition.
Where is Paid based?
Paid is based in London, UK.
What sector is Paid in?
Paid operates in the AI sector. It makes computer systems that learn and perform tasks people used to do. That helps businesses automate work and get faster results.
Key trends and challenges in AI:
Rise of autonomous AI agents and new business models
Autonomous AI agents automate jobs, so per-seat pricing breaks down and new pricing models are needed.
Infrastructure and interoperability bottlenecks
Demand grows for infrastructure that tracks agent costs and integrates with frameworks like LangChain and LlamaIndex.
Regulation, safety and workforce impact
Regulators and firms must manage safety, bias, and job displacement, for example in call centres and data entry.
For a deeper look at innovation in this space, see the latest funded AI startups in the UK
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