As the AI agent era gains momentum, a new wave of startups is emerging. Not to build AI agents themselves but to support the complex infrastructure behind them. Leading the charge is AI agent startup Paid, founded by Manny Medina, the well-known tech entrepreneur behind sales automation giant Outreach.
Paid, which officially launched this week, isn’t focused on creating bots. Instead, the platform solves a problem many agentic platform startups face: how to price, pay, and manage AI agents profitably. Backed by €10 million (about $11 million) in pre-seed funding from EQT Ventures, Sequoia, and GTMFund, Paid aims to redefine billing models for the AI-driven workforce.
After spending months talking to startups building agent platforms, Medina uncovered a shared frustration. No one knew how to price their agents effectively. Traditional SaaS pricing, charging per seat or by usage. Simply doesn’t work when one human can deploy dozens of AI agents, or when agents operate autonomously.
“The way we’ve priced software for the last two decades just breaks down here,” Medina explained. “Companies don’t want to pay per email sent or per task completed. They want to pay for outcomes — the same way they pay an employee.”
For example, if an AI agent in insurance is tasked with handling policy renewals, the client cares about the number of completed renewals — not how many LLM tokens the agent consumed or how many emails it sent to get there.
This is where Paid’s platform steps in. It allows startups to build flexible pricing models — fixed or variable — while tracking each agent’s output and calculating margins. In essence, it blends billing with HR management for AI agents, helping startups test pricing strategies, manage costs, and prove return on investment.
“It’s the AI agent era version of Zuora meets SuccessFactors,” Medina added, drawing parallels to two iconic SaaS platforms — one built for subscription billing, the other for HR.
Paid isn’t chasing enterprise clients like Microsoft or Salesforce, who are building their own agentic platforms. Instead, it’s focusing on nimble startups moving fast in this new space. Early beta customers include Logic.app, 11x, VidLab7, Artisan, and HappyRobot — all exploring ways to deploy AI agents in real-world roles.
“Agents are replacing roles — not whole jobs yet — but entire roles,” Medina explained. “This shift means the way we think about software billing has to change, too.”
Interestingly, Medina is applying the same AI-first approach to building Paid. The startup’s initial demo was built in just a month by two engineers, powered by tools like v0, Replit, and Lovable — showcasing how AI is even reshaping how startups are launched.
“This is what’s fun about building a company now. We built our whole platform in a month because everything is AI-driven,” Medina shared.
For Medina, it’s familiar territory. The former Microsoft veteran and a long-time figure in Seattle’s tech scene, he founded Outreach in 2011 and grew it from zero to 800 employees and $250 million in ARR before stepping down as CEO. Now based in London, he’s betting Paid can become the essential tool powering the next generation of AI-powered workforces.
