Paid Secures $21.6M Seed Round Led by Lightspeed, Revolutionizing AI Billing with Results-Based Model
In a significant move, Manny Medina, renowned for founding sales automation startup Outreach with a valuation of $4.4 billion, has made waves with his latest venture, Paid. The London-based startup recently secured an oversubscribed $21.6 million seed round, led by Lightspeed, bringing its total funding to $33.3 million since the €10 million pre-seed round in March. Sources familiar with the deal indicate that the company’s valuation now surpasses $100 million.
Stepping out of stealth mode in March, Paid offers a unique contribution to the AI agentic world: Rather than providing AI agents, it enables agent creators to bill their clients based on the value these worker algorithms deliver. This innovative approach is gaining traction and is sometimes referred to as “results-based billing.”
Paid aims to empower agent creators to start charging for the margin saved by their customers, as described by Medina. This marks a shift from the unlimited use, per-user fees prevalent in the SaaS era, or the buy-it-once, install-it fees common in the client/server era.
The per-user fee model faces challenges due to usage fees paid to model providers and cloud service providers by agent creators. Unlimited use could potentially lead to financial losses. Agent creators, therefore, need to demonstrate the value their agents provide to customers, as they primarily operate in the background.
Medina notes, “If you’re a quiet agent, you don’t get paid. You need an infrastructure that allows the agent to charge for the additional work it is doing.”
Charging a monthly fee for a limited number of credits, similar to model makers and vibe coders, poses risks for agent creators as well. This is due to the prevalence of AI producing little value, with most enterprise projects found to have no value following billions spent on AI pilots, according to a recent MIT study, in which only 5% were put into production.
Companies are less likely to pay for AI that generates unnecessary emails or other output with minimal impact. One of Paid’s early customers is Artisan, the viral sales automation startup, while it is also experiencing success with SaaS companies exploring agent-driven growth strategies. The startup recently added ERP vendor IFS as a new customer.
Alexander Schmitt from Lightspeed, a venture firm that has invested over $2.5 billion into AI infrastructure and application layer companies over the last three years, commented on the investment. He observed that most AI pilots fail due to a lack of value attribution to agents’ work.
Schmitt believes Paid offers a unique approach, stating, “It’s something that we haven’t seen someone else build.” As competition for results-based billing in the agentic world grows, it is likely that more players will enter this space if Paid’s model proves successful.
New investor FUSE and existing investor EQT Ventures also participated in the round.
