Kite, also known as Kite AI, is building something very different from a typical blockchain. At its core, Kite is creating a world where AI agents don’t just think or respond, but actually act on their own. These agents can identify themselves, make payments, follow rules, and work with humans and businesses in real time. Kite is designed as a Layer-1 blockchain that gives AI agents the trust, identity, and payment tools they need to operate independently, safely, and at machine speed.
What makes Kite special is that it is built specifically for AI agents. Every agent can have a verifiable on-chain identity, almost like a digital passport, which proves who or what it is and what it’s allowed to do. This means agents can be trusted, monitored, and governed instead of acting as anonymous bots. Payments are fast and cheap, designed for tiny transactions that happen constantly between agents, services, and merchants. Because Kite is EVM-compatible, developers can use familiar Ethereum tools to build on it without starting from scratch.
In 2025, Kite reached a major milestone by raising a large Series A funding round led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst, with support from well-known crypto and tech investors. This brought total funding to around $33 million and gave the project strong credibility in both traditional finance and Web3. The funding is being used to push product development, grow integrations, and prepare the network for wider use.
One of the biggest steps forward was the launch of Kite AIR, the platform’s core system for agent identity and payments. With Kite AIR, AI agents can carry verified identities, discover services through an agent-focused marketplace, and pay instantly using programmable stablecoins. This allows AI agents to do real economic tasks, like buying data, paying for APIs, or even purchasing goods from online stores. Integrations with platforms like Shopify and PayPal are especially important because they connect AI agents directly to real-world commerce.
Throughout 2025, Kite ran multiple testnet phases where huge numbers of simulated agent interactions were processed. These tests showed that the network could handle very high activity as the team refined performance and stability. The mainnet is expected to become fully operational with stablecoin settlement in late 2025 or early 2026, once testing and security work are complete.
The KITE token officially launched in November 2025 and quickly gained attention after listing on major exchanges like Binance, Upbit, and Bithumb. Trading volume was extremely high at launch, showing strong market interest. The total supply of KITE is 10 billion tokens, with a large share reserved for the community, while the rest is split between investors and the team. At first, the token is mainly used for incentives and ecosystem growth, but future phases will add staking, governance voting, fee payments, and deeper protocol rewards.
Around the core network, developers are starting to build tools for payments, AI services, governance, and automated workflows that fit agent-based use cases. The idea is to create an ecosystem where AI agents can find services, negotiate costs, pay instantly, and operate under clear rules. Market sentiment has been volatile, as expected with a new token, but attention is slowly shifting from price action to real utility and long-term potential.
Kite’s long-term vision goes far beyond payments. The team is working toward a future where AI agents form their own economies, cooperating and transacting at machine speed while remaining transparent, auditable, and compliant. By combining identity, governance, and payments at the protocol level, Kite is trying to make autonomous AI activity safe enough for real-world finance and commerce. If this vision succeeds, Kite could become one of the core infrastructures that allows AI to truly participate in the global economy, not just as tools, but as independent actors.
