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As the twelvemonth of the AI agent takes form , a Modern movement is go forth : startups offer the pick and power shovel that serve employers build a workforce of bots .
Manny Medina , advantageously be intimate as the founder and former CEO of the $ 4.4 billion rate sale automation ship’s company Outreach , just launched one such startup call Paid , he tell TechCrunch solely . Paiddoesn’t make AI agent . It offers a platform that ensure they get make up , profitably . Paid harbinger Monday that it raised € 10 million ( about $ 11 million ) in a pre - seed investiture from European powerhouse EQT Ventures , Sequoia , andGTMFund .
Medina do up with the idea for Paid after pass month talking to dozens of agentic platform inauguration . In these conversation , a vulgar complaint emerged . “ They did n’t really recognise what to charge , ” Medina told TechCrunch .
The premise of Paid is that the old ways of charging for software wo n’t bring with AI agents . Agentic companies ca n’t charge per drug user or per hind end , meaning based on how many mass are using the software system ( like onetime - school Microsoft Office ) . The whole compass point is that one employee could run lots of agents . Or agent will lam by themselves with no human superintendent at all .
Companies developing AI agents also ca n’t charge like the last big generational change in computer software , SaaS , rouse by custom because , if agents wreak in good order , they “ are taking over a whole function , ” Medina says .
An agent ’s customer does n’t need to pay for all the discrete labor an agent does — if it even knows them all , he allege . They want to pay for its resultant role , like an employee . So if an agentive role is hired in indemnity and the role ’s succeeder is measured in completed insurance policy renewals , a society does n’t need to bear for each e-mail the broker sent .
At the same clip , the costs associated with provide agents are varying , depending on how many LLM tokens it needs to execute its training and its tasks .
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“ So how do you help them price for the line that they ’re delivering ? ” Medina said of the startup offering agent . “ They needed the ability to try new things with different client . They involve the power to appraise their margins . ”
Billing meets HR management
factor are so new that inauguration have n’t had to deal with processes that provide profitable billing , let alone renewals . Paid allows agentic startups to make pricing — fixed or variable — with an middle to profitable allowance .
In doing so , it also tracks agents ’ production , which also lets inauguration validate the rejoinder on investment .
It ’s the AI factor era version of Zuora ( SaaS renewal billing package ) meets SuccessFactors ( SaaS hour management software ) .
The Paid chopine is being marketed to inauguration , rather than enterprises like Salesforce and Microsoft , which are also offering agentic platform . Paid has three such companies as beta customers , it says : Logic.app , 11x , VidLab7 , Artisan , and HappyRobot .
“ broker are supplant roles , human roles , not the entire job , but intact role , ” Medina says .
He ’s also practicing what he preaches , using AI to work up this new inauguration . give railroad engineer vibration taunt the initial mathematical product demonstrate with tools like v0 , Replit , and Lovable .
“ This is what is so much playfulness about build a party right now . We have two engineer , and we have build the entirety of the building platform in a calendar month . Why ? Because we work up everything on AI , ” he said .
Medina has experience building companies from nothing . The former Microsoftie , who has been a well know part of the Seattle tech setting for X , took Outreach from $ 0 when he found it in 2011 to 800 employee and $ 250 million in annual recurring revenue by the time he left the CEO role in September .
Medina go forth the executive chairman role in March , though he remain on the board . He , and Paid , are now based in London .
