29 AI startups unveiled... including a payment company for enterprise agents in virtual assets

Newcomer and Felicis released Emergent, a founder-recommended list of 29 early-stage AI startups that excludes companies which have raised beyond a seed round and is not a ranking or performance assessment. Among the 29 is Agentcard, which supplies payment rails for AI agents making online purchases, with crypto firms included in its target users. The inclusion signals that agent-driven payments—and crypto businesses as customers for them—are being treated as an emerging category by prominent early-stage investors. The list's structure means all 29 companies are seed-stage or earlier, so the names to watch are those that next announce funding rounds.