Outreach, Palantir, And Salesforce Veterans Raise $21M For Paid.ai To End Seat-Based SaaS Billing With AI Agent Infrastructure – Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ:PLTR), Salesforce (NYSE:CRM)
Paid.ai on Sunday announced that it closed a $21 million oversubscribed seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. FUSE and existing investor EQT Ventures participated in the round, which brings the startup’s total funding to $33.3 million.
Paid.ai aims to solve a mounting problem for software businesses, namely, how to charge for AI agents that eliminate human workers and traditional seat-based pricing models.
Manny Medina, who co-founded sales engagement platform Outreach, leads Paid.ai alongside Manoj Ganapathy, who built billing infrastructure at Salesforce (NYSE:CRM), Raj Dosanjh, an early Palantir Technologies (NYSE:PLTR) employee, and Arnon Shimoni, who joined Pleo during its early stages.
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Early Movers See 40% Revenue Surge
Paid.ai described its platform as a billing infrastructure designed to help software-as-a-service firms abandon seat-based pricing in favor of outcome-driven models tailored for AI agents. Seat counts are dropping across the industry, and the company said customers are unwilling to pay per seat for software that reduces headcount.
Paid.ai pointed to slowing expansion across publicly traded SaaS companies, with many now reporting single-digit growth or outright declines. According to the company, this trend reflects a broader workforce shift in which AI agents are replacing teams that once drove seat-based subscription revenue.
The company said half of the global workforce is expected to consist of AI agents by 2030, making per-seat pricing unsustainable. Paid.ai described the change as an inflection point similar to the move from on-premise to cloud software, warning that companies failing to adapt risk falling behind.
Early adopters of AI agent billing are seeing revenue gains of 20% to 40% within six months, with faster sales cycles and stronger customer retention, the company said.
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Paid.ai’s Model for the Agent Economy
Paid.ai’s platform core features include value-proof dashboards that demonstrate the business impact of agents, custom pricing systems aligned to performance, and cost-tracking tools that measure profitability at both the customer and agent level.
Paid.ai also offers business intelligence functions that allow SaaS companies to run what-if scenarios, analyze margins, and adapt billing structures in real time. The company described the SaaS-to-agent transition as its duty, reinforcing the view that adapting pricing models is no longer optional.
12-Month Window to Dominate or Disappear
Paid.ai said customers are already demanding outcome-based pricing that reflects the value AI agents deliver rather than the number of employees using software tools. Advances in technology now allow agents to manage complex workflows with predictable costs, creating an opening for scalable business models.
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The company added that its mission is to “grow the AI agent economy by helping builders get paid for their agents.” Paid.ai’s infrastructure is available for SaaS companies ready to make the transition, with founders encouraging leaders to act quickly or risk losing competitive ground.
Companies have approximately 12 months to execute the transition successfully, the startup said. Organizations that complete the shift will dominate their categories, while those that delay face displacement by AI-first competitors.
The funding will accelerate Paid.ai’s roadmap for SaaS companies making the agent transition, according to the statement.
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