No.265
Kite KITE
the courier that gives every AI agent an ID badge and a wallet
🎭 part doorman, part bookkeeper: it checks each machine's papers, holds the purse strings, and lets nobody overspend
💬 “Your AI assistant wants to buy a dataset, then pay a second bot to clean it. I hand each one an ID and a spending limit, watch the coins move in real time, and nobody has to wake you up to type a password.”
- The idea: a Layer-1 blockchain built so AI agents can hold an identity, follow spending rules, and pay each other on their own.
- The team: the company once called Zettablock, renamed Kite; it raised an $18M round in Sept 2025 led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst.
- The token: KITE, with a fixed cap of 10 billion. It went live on November 3, 2025.
- The catch: the AI-agent economy it is built for barely exists yet, so the demand is still mostly a bet on the future.
📖 The Story
In September 2025, a payments giant placed an odd bet. PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst led an $18 million round into a young team to solve a problem most people had not noticed yet: when an AI agent goes off and does errands for you, how does it actually pay for things?
That team had a past life. It started as a data company named Zettablock, then renamed itself Kite and pointed everything at one question. Its founders are Chi Zhang, who holds an AI doctorate from UC Berkeley and worked at Databricks, and Scott Shi, who built real-time AI systems at Uber and Salesforce. They had watched chatbots get smart enough to plan a trip or fill a shopping cart, and noticed the embarrassing gap at the end: the bot still had to stop and ask a human to enter a card number.
So Kite built the missing piece. Each agent gets a verifiable ID badge and a wallet with rules baked in, like ‘you may spend up to $20 today, and only on these services.’ Agents can then find each other, hire each other, and settle up in stablecoin micropayments that clear in a blink. No human in the loop, but also no agent running wild with your money.
On November 3, 2025, the KITE token went live and the network opened for traffic. Whether the agent economy shows up to use it is the open question the whole project is wagering on.
📊 Stats
These are our editorial readings of the project's character, not market data.
🧩 How it works
Kite's cleverest part is its three-layer identity. Instead of one all-powerful key, authority is split three ways: you (the root, the only key that can lose everything), each agent you send out (with limited, handed-down power), and each session (a throwaway pass for a single task). If a session or an agent gets hacked, the damage is fenced in, your root key stays safe.
It is an EVM-compatible Layer-1, so it speaks the same language as Ethereum apps, and it settles tiny payments off to the side so they clear almost instantly for next to nothing. Its consensus, called Proof of Attributed Intelligence, tries to reward useful AI work and data rather than raw computing power.
🌗 Light & Shadow
- A clear, specific problem: AI agents really do lack a safe, native way to pay, and Kite was built only for that
- Serious backers for a young project (PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst led the $18M round, with Avalanche Foundation and Animoca among others)
- The three-layer identity keeps a hacked agent or session from draining your main wallet
- A fixed cap of 10 billion tokens, so holders are not quietly diluted by endless new supply
- The ‘agent economy’ it serves is still tiny, so today's demand is a bet on a future that may arrive slowly, or differently than promised
- Crowded lane: other teams are chasing AI-agent payments too, and big firms could build rivals in-house
- Young and unproven. The token only launched in November 2025, with little real-world track record yet
- Founders, investors, and a module hold a large share of supply (team 20% + investors 12%), so unlocks can weigh on the price
🧬 Evolution lineage
Kite is not a fork of another coin. It grew out of a company rebrand, Zettablock becoming Kite, and launched as an Avalanche L1, which makes Avalanche its nearest relative on the tree.
🧭 Meet other friends
❓ FAQ
- What is Kite (KITE)?
- Kite is a Layer-1 blockchain made for AI agents. It gives each agent its own verifiable ID and wallet, plus rules about how much it may spend, so one piece of software can pay another in real time without a person clicking ‘approve’.
- Who built Kite?
- A company that used to be called Zettablock, then renamed itself Kite. Its founders are Chi Zhang (CEO, with an AI PhD from UC Berkeley and time at Databricks) and Scott Shi (CTO, formerly at Uber and Salesforce). In September 2025 the team raised an $18M Series A led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst.
- How many KITE tokens are there?
- The total supply is capped at 10 billion KITE and that number never goes up. Roughly 48% is set aside for the ecosystem and community, 20% for a module, 20% for the team, and 12% for investors. The token went live on November 3, 2025.
- Is Kite the same as a stablecoin?
- No. Agents on Kite often pay each other in stablecoins, but KITE itself is the network's own token used for fees, staking, and governance. It is the rail and the toll, not the dollar-pegged cash moving across it. (Information only, not investment advice.)
⚠️ Not investment advice. All figures are for information only