Berlin-based business payments company Pliant has closed an $80 million Series C round, aiming to let outside AI agents initiate and manage corporate payments through its platform.
The oversubscribed round was co-led by Seaya Nova and Speedinvest, with Illuminate Financial, Motive Partners and Molten Ventures also taking part. The company, which also operates from New York, was founded in 2020. Trade reports put its total funding at around $200 million.
Opening the platform to agents
Alongside the funding, Pliant said it is making its payment infrastructure available to third-party AI systems, including assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT, through the Model Context Protocol, a standard that lets AI tools connect to outside software. In practice, a finance team could instruct an AI agent to issue cards, pay suppliers or adjust spending limits, with every action running through Pliant’s licensed rails.
The regulatory angle is central to the pitch. Backers at Seaya Nova argue that when software starts moving money on its own, someone still has to hold the licences, keep an audit trail and carry liability when things go wrong. Pliant wants to be that accountable layer.
Growth behind the raise
The company says it passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue in July and that its business has roughly doubled in each of the past three years. Its previous round was a $40 million Series B in April 2025. The company is led by co-founders Malte Rau and Fabian Terner.
The new capital is earmarked for North American expansion, with the US and Canada named as priorities, and for further international growth.
A crowded field
Pliant is entering a competitive corner of fintech. In corporate spend management, US rival Ramp reached a $60 billion valuation in October, and the major card networks have been testing agent-driven payments of their own. Pliant’s wager is that a modular, licensed European platform can win customers by being ready when companies begin handing routine payment tasks to software.
How much payment authority finance teams will give AI agents is still unclear, and much of the technology is new. With fresh funding and a growing revenue base, Pliant is positioned to find out.