Have you ever wanted to get into Y Combinator?
This weekend, Saturday November 15th is your best chance.
We’re hosting the first ever agentic payments hackathon with Coinbase, Stripe, Anthropic, Replit, and OpenAI sponsoring. We’ll be inviting 200 top builders to join and shape the future of agentic finance.
That’s not all. For first place?
A guaranteed Y Combinator interview, along with over $40k in other incentives across the hackathon.
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to make something people want in a brand new space.
We’re running out of space, and applications are due soon. Comment what you want to build for an expedited review of your application.
Apply here!
https://lnkd.in/e3EYgwPE
Have you ever wanted to get into Y Combinator?
This weekend, Saturday November 15th is your best chance.
We’re hosting the first ever agentic payments hackathon with Coinbase, Stripe, Anthropic, Replit, and OpenAI sponsoring. We’ll be inviting 200 top builders to join and shape the future of agentic finance.
That’s not all. For first place?
A guaranteed Y Combinator interview, along with over $40k in other incentives across the hackathon.
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to make something people want in a brand new space.
We’re running out of space, and applications are due soon. Comment what you want to build for an expedited review of your application.
Apply here!
https://lnkd.in/e3EYgwPE
Locus (YC F25) is building payment infrastructure for AI agents.
Founded by Cole Dermott (ex-Coinbase) and Eliot Lee (ex-Scale AI), Locus was born out of a shared realization: as we entrust agents with increasingly long and noisy workflows, they will inevitably need to pay for things. Maybe that’s purchasing e-commerce items, compensating contractors, or making micropayments to access paywalled data.
But you can’t just give an agent your credit card or bank account. What happens when it overspends, or pays the wrong vendor? Today’s payment systems were built for humans, not autonomous actors.
OpenAI, Google, and Coinbase have all recently released new agentic payment protocols. But no one has built the secure control layer to make this safe. Until now. Locus is that layer: policy-driven infrastructure that lets you connect your agents safely to funds. Locus enforces budgets, permissions, and provides full auditability across rails like USDC, ACH, and wire.
Locus is now in beta, starting with USDC-native payments. Fiat and custody options are coming soon.
Join the beta and help shape the future of agent-driven finance at https://paywithlocus.com.
Congrats on the launch, Cole and Eliot!
🚀 https://lnkd.in/gS79yZhV
We interviewed CalHacks attendants live outside of Y Combinator HQ this past week about whether they would give their agents money.
Unsurprisingly, people don't feel ready yet. Safety is still a big concern - Locus (YC F25) changes that.
We allow you to connect your agents to funds, safely and securely.
Imagine all the possibilities: Agents making context-informed trades to earn returns, automating noisy, hours-long workflows that require payments somewhere in the loop.
To get early access to our closed beta, fill out this google form here: https://lnkd.in/e_GSS2gh
Also, our Discord is officially live. To join the Locus community use this link: https://lnkd.in/eWCsHv-j
We will make them pay.
📷: Cole Dermott, Eliot Lee
Sam Altman spoke live at Y Combinator, and we asked him one question: "Will agents need to pay for things?"
Unsurprisingly, he said yes. Sam believes the future of micro-payments on the internet will be agent-driven. As agents evolve from tools into dependable, autonomous actors, they’ll need the ability to execute open-ended workflows end-to-end.
This inevitably means payments — accessing paywalled data, transacting for services or with other specialist agents. But autonomy requires guardrails. Businesses and developers will need a way to ensure their agents only spend how much and on what they’re supposed to.
The machine economy is coming, and Locus (YC F25) is building the connector businesses will need to participate. We connect agents securely to funds, letting you define permissions and limits for every transaction. Each payment is traceable, auditable, and fully reconcilable with your existing financial stack.
If you agree with Sam and want to stay ahead, reach out via DM. We can get you onto our closed beta.
The space is early, but that’s exactly why it’s the right time to build. The founders who win the future act today.
Agents are getting more productive. Now they need to make payments.
The explosion in AI agents over the last year has been incredible to witness; we’re already seeing them 10x productivity across countless workflows.
To keep that momentum, agents will need to manipulate real-world resources. That’s why MCP has been so powerful: it gives agents the ability to reliably use external tools through natural language.
But the interface layer is only one part of bringing agents into the real world. The next frontier is money.
As agents evolve from tools into autonomous actors, they need the ability to handle payments independently. Google and OpenAI have made moves here with their payment protocols (AP2 and ACP), but they’re focused on B2C commerce, like shopping or travel booking.
What’s missing is the B2B layer: the ability for agents to handle invoices, procurement, reimbursements, payouts, and fund movements between organizations.
This is where the most economic activity happens (hundred of trillions annually), and where safety, compliance, and audibility are non-negotiable.
The problem? Today’s payment rails were built for humans, not agents. They can’t recognize or reason about autonomous actors, leaving a business with no way to safely audit or control how agents move money.
That’s why we’re building Locus.
Locus is a secure platform for connecting agents to funds and controlling their access. Give agents identities, tie them to policy groups (budgets, permissions, approval flows), and every transaction runs through our policy engine for full audibility.
We’re launching our closed beta today, starting with onchain payments (USDC on Base), with fiat support coming in a few weeks. You can spin up non-custodial wallets and let your agent make direct-to-wallet payments or direct-to-email payouts.
One example: Imagine a tasking platform that autonomously evaluates submissions, scores them with an AI according to a rubric, and pays out rewards; all without manual intervention. As this scales across many micro-tasks, automation becomes essential. Our infrastructure makes this super easy to build in a way that ensures your agent never overspends (see the demo below!).
We’re giving access (and a few dollars in USDC) to anyone who wants to experiment. If you’re building AI agents that could benefit from payment capabilities, let’s talk.
Request access to our closed beta here: https://lnkd.in/eCfMq6Y5
