Manny Medina, best known as the founder of $4.4 billion sales automation company Outreach, has launched a new startup called Paid, designed to change how AI agents are billed. The London-based company has raised an impressive $21.6 million seed round led by Lightspeed, adding to its earlier €10 million pre-seed in March. In total, Paid has now secured $33.3 million in funding, with its valuation already topping $100 million, according to insiders.
Unlike many startups focused on building AI agents, Paid takes a different approach. The company provides results-based billing infrastructure, allowing developers to charge customers based on the actual value their agents deliver. Instead of traditional SaaS models like subscriptions or per-user licenses, Paid enables billing that reflects real-world outcomes.
Medina believes this shift is critical. “If an agent provides measurable value, it should get paid. If it does nothing, it shouldn’t,” he explained. Since AI agents often rely on costly cloud and model resources, linking payment directly to performance offers a fairer and more sustainable path for adoption.
The idea is timely. A recent MIT study revealed that 95% of AI projects fail to make it into production, largely because they don’t demonstrate return on investment. By letting companies pay only for meaningful outcomes, Paid helps filter out what Medina calls “AI slop” — content or processes that add little value.
Early partners include Artisan, a fast-growing sales automation startup, and enterprise software provider IFS. Backers Lightspeed, EQT Ventures, and FUSE see Paid as a future backbone of the AI economy. As Lightspeed’s Alexander Schmitt noted, “The missing link in AI agents is value attribution. Paid is solving that problem.”
With strong momentum, Paid is positioning itself at the heart of the results-based billing revolution for AI agents.
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