Naïve raises $28.5M Series A to let AI agents run a company
Naïve provides infrastructure that lets AI agents handle much of the work of setting up and running a business, packaging payments, email accounts, phone numbers, cloud infrastructure, storage and company incorporation behind a single API. Developers feed a Naïve-supplied prompt to tools such as Cursor, Claude Code or Codex, which then connect to the company's API to provision the business. An agent can orchestrate the formation of a U.S. LLC, supplying the state, industry code, business description and proposed names, though a human still has to complete KYC/KYB checks and make any required payments. From there, agents can set up email inboxes, virtual cards, phone numbers, databases, computing resources and connections to services such as Stripe and QuickBooks. A governance layer lets users set budgets, restrict what their agents can do, and require human approval before sensitive actions are carried out. Naïve also ships templates for specific business types, including AI SEO, full-stack SaaS apps, recruiting, accounting and customer support, plus a mobile emulator agents can use to operate smartphone apps on emulated devices.
The pitch has found traction fast. Naïve has signed up over 30,000 developer customers within months of launch and scaled its annual run-rate revenue 10x to the low double-digit millions over the past six months, CEO and co-founder Sean Dorje told TechCrunch. On the back of that growth, the company has raised $28.5 million in a Series A round led by Nexus Venture Partners, bringing its total capital raised to roughly $32 million. Y Combinator, Zetta, Liquid 2 and angel investors including Gokul Rajaram, Apollo.io co-founder Tim Zheng and former HubSpot COO JD Sherman also took part in the round.
Dorje said customers are running autonomous businesses through Naïve, among them AI automation agencies, "face-less" content channels on TikTok and YouTube, and even a rental car agency. In one case he found Naïve's infrastructure behind a TikTok channel posting AI-generated videos of cats and dogs dancing and boxing. He said AI automation agencies, businesses built around selling agents to other small businesses, are currently the fastest-growing category on the platform, alongside customers who run an entire rental-car agency autonomously.
Running large numbers of AI agents can get expensive, since they call costly models, pass large amounts of context between tasks, and consume resources while sitting idle. Naïve is putting part of the new funding into infrastructure meant to bring that cost down: a model router that sends each query to the most efficient model for the task while preserving and replaying already reasoned data, a memory system that stores and surfaces business context for agents, and an orchestrator that divides work among agents. It is also building a serverless runtime that runs agents inside lightweight JavaScript environments rather than assigning each one a full virtual machine, an approach meant to let customers pay mainly while an agent is active and make it cheaper to run large numbers of agents at once. Dorje said demand for that inference and cost-optimization side of the business, rather than the original company-setup toolkit, is now growing fastest, since agent inference is customers' biggest cost line; he added that the company is also seeing enterprise interest, though he did not name any enterprise customers.
Naïve currently has 10 full-time employees. Dorje said the Series A proceeds will go toward hiring researchers and building out four infrastructure projects: virtualized sandboxes for agents, model routing and inference optimization, a memory layer, and governance and orchestration tools.
Key facts
- Naïve raised a $28.5 million Series A led by Nexus Venture Partners, bringing its total funding to roughly $32 million.
- The startup has signed up over 30,000 developer customers and grown annual run-rate revenue 10x to the low double-digit millions over the past six months, per CEO Sean Dorje.
- Naïve's API lets AI agents orchestrate formation of a U.S. LLC and set up email, phone numbers, cloud infrastructure and storage, though humans still handle KYC/KYB and payments.
- New funding is going toward a model router, memory system, orchestrator and a serverless runtime that runs agents in lightweight JavaScript environments instead of full virtual machines, aimed at cutting agent inference costs.
- Customers run autonomous businesses through Naïve, including AI automation agencies, "face-less" TikTok and YouTube channels, and a rental-car agency.
Why it matters
Naïve is pitching a step beyond vibe coding: instead of just writing code with AI agents, founders hand agents the administrative core of running a company, from incorporation paperwork to phone numbers and cloud accounts. The fast uptake, over 30,000 developer customers and 10x revenue growth in six months, suggests real demand for offloading that grunt work, and Nexus Venture Partners leading the round signals investor appetite for infrastructure built around the idea that companies will increasingly be operated by agents rather than employees.
Who it affects
Developers and solo founders who want to spin up a business quickly using Cursor, Claude Code or Codex are the direct users, since Naïve's prompt and API plug into those tools. Enterprises exploring how to control the cost of running many AI agents are a second audience Dorje pointed to, alongside the investors backing the round: Nexus Venture Partners, Y Combinator, Zetta, Liquid 2, and angels including Gokul Rajaram, Tim Zheng and JD Sherman.
How to use it
A developer feeds Naïve's prompt to an agent in Cursor, Claude Code or Codex, which then calls Naïve's API to provision a business. The agent can handle LLC formation details (state, industry code, business description, proposed names) and later set up email inboxes, virtual cards, phone numbers, databases, computing resources and connections to Stripe and QuickBooks; a human still needs to complete KYC/KYB checks and any required payments. A governance layer lets the user cap budgets, restrict what the agent can do, and require approval before sensitive actions, and Naïve offers ready-made templates for business types such as AI SEO, full-stack SaaS, recruiting, accounting and customer support, plus a mobile emulator for agents to operate smartphone apps.
How solid is it
The figures, the $28.5 million round, the 30,000-plus customer count, the 10x revenue growth and the roughly $32 million total raised, come from CEO Sean Dorje in a TechCrunch exclusive, not from independently audited numbers. No valuation is disclosed, and Naïve's exact launch date isn't given, only that the customer count was reached within months of it. Dorje also said the company is getting enterprise interest but did not name any enterprise customer.
Risks and caveats
Running large numbers of AI agents can itself get expensive, since they call costly models, pass context between tasks and consume resources while idle; that is precisely the cost problem Naïve's new infrastructure projects are meant to address, not one it has already solved. Company formation isn't fully automated either, since KYC/KYB checks and required payments still need a human. With no valuation or enterprise customer names disclosed, how much of the platform's use is durable business infrastructure versus low-stakes experiments, such as the TikTok channel of AI-generated cats and dogs boxing, is not yet clear from the article.
“I think the one that's growing the fastest right now is AI automation agencies. You know, the first business that a lot of people start is genuinely just selling agents to other small businesses [...] We have some customers who run an entire rental-car agency autonomously.”
— Sean Dorje, CEO and co-founder of Naïve