Sapiom has raised $15M to help AI providers buy their own technology

People with no coding background find that they can create their own your favorite apps using what’s called vibe coding – solutions like Beloved that turn language descriptions into functional codes.

Although these conversion tools can help to create good prototypes, starting them in full production (as this reporter recently discovered) can be tricky without thinking about how to connect the program with external technical services, such as those that can send messages via SMS, email, and Stripe payment processing.

Ilan Zerbib, who spent five years as Shopify’s director of engineering for payments, is developing a solution that can eliminate the pain of development for non-professional developers.

Last summer, Zerbib launched SapiomThe startup creates a financial platform that allows AI agents to securely purchase and access software, APIs, data, and computing — essentially creating a payment system that allows AI to automatically purchase the services it needs.

Every time an AI agent connects to an external tool like Twilio for SMS, it requires authentication and a small payment.. Sapiom’s goal is to make the entire process seamless, allowing an AI assistant to decide what to buy and when without human intervention.

“In the future, applications will use services that require payment. Currently, there is no easy way for agents to access all of this,” said Amit Kumar, partner at Accel.

Kumar has met many startups in the payments AI space, but he believes Zerbib’s focus on the financial side of businesses, not consumers, is what’s needed to make AI assistants work. That’s why Accel is leading Sapiom’s $15 million seed round, backed by 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 message, it’s a payment. Every time you open an AWS server, it’s a payment,” Kumar told TechCrunch.

While it’s still early days for Sapiom, the founders hope that its operating system will be adopted by vibe-coding companies and other AI companies that will eventually be tasked with doing more things on their own.

For example, anyone who has a vibe-code app with SMS doesn’t need to manually sign up for Twilio, add a credit card, and copy an API key to their code. Instead, Sapiom handles all of that in the background, and the person developing the app will be billed for Twilio services as a pass-through fee with Lovable, Bolt, or another vibe-coding platform.

Although Sapiom is focused on B2B solutions, its technology can empower AI agents to engage in sales and consumer engagement. The hope is that people will one day rely on assistants to make autonomous financial decisions, such as hailing an Uber or shopping on Amazon. While the future is exciting, Zerbib believes that AI won’t magically make people buy more products, which is why he’s focusing on creating parts of business finance instead.