Tether invests in AI payment gateway AIsa

Tether Capital invested in AI-agent gateway AIsa on Oct. 15, with the investment amount and valuation undisclosed. AIsa lets AI agents access and pay for APIs, data and computing services on a per-use basis. Businesses can set spending limits for the agents they operate.

AIsa described the investment as part of a seed extension that brought its total funding above $9 million. HIVEN also joined the round. Earlier investors include Alibaba, Tribe Capital, Sumitomo Corporation, Draper Associates and Saison Capital. AIsa is based in San Francisco.

The company provides one access key for more than 100 data APIs and major large language models, according to its documentation. Its listed services include Similarweb, Semrush, X, YouTube, CoinGecko and Perplexity. AIsa reports more than 250,000 agents and over 100 million processed transactions. It has not provided a breakdown of free, card-funded and stablecoin-settled activity.

AIsa offers three payment methods. Customers can add funds to a prepaid balance through Stripe. Agents can use the x402 protocol to pay selected data endpoints with a cryptocurrency wallet, or use the Machine Payments Protocol for certain requests. The prepaid balance covers models and APIs, and businesses can set a hard spending limit for each access key.

The documented x402 system uses USDC deposited into Circle Gateway on 11 EVM-compatible networks, including Ethereum, Base, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Unichain, Sonic, World Chain, Sei and HyperEVM. An agent requests a paid endpoint and receives an HTTP 402 payment challenge. It then signs authorization for a USDC transfer and resends the request. Circle settles payments in batches.

AIsa’s published x402 catalog includes 104 data endpoints. Prices range from $0.00044 for an X profile lookup to $0.12 for a full financial-statement request. Model calls remain on the key-based API and are not available through the x402 data-payment route, according to the company’s documentation.

Tether’s announcement described billing in fiat currency or stablecoins, but neither Tether nor AIsa identified a USDT integration. The payment documents reviewed identify USDC, rather than USDT, as the stablecoin used for the documented on-chain settlement process.

Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s chief executive, described the investment as a way to let people give agents access to services while retaining control of spending. AIsa founder and CEO Jordan Liu described enterprise agents as needing trusted information, useful tools and a governed way to transact.

AIsa has begun pilot programs with unnamed companies in financial intelligence, market research, supply-chain management and commerce. Its pricing page lists pay-as-you-go access without a subscription. Builder and Team plans include monthly API credits, while model usage is billed separately.

Using AIsa’s published x402 prices, a research agent making 20 web searches, 10 cited-answer requests, 50 X profile lookups, five financial-data requests and 30 token-price requests would spend about $0.81 per run. Running the task on 22 working days would cost about $17.91 in data fees, excluding model usage.

AIsa’s published service counts differ across its materials. Its homepage refers to more than 5,000 APIs, skills and models, while its documentation lists more than 100 data APIs and its x402 catalog lists 104 endpoints. The company says only per-key spending limits provide a hard ceiling on charges. Price estimates and maximum-price headers do not cap the final cost of metered endpoints.