Adeline has backed Ralio to build the trust infrastructure for B2B agentic payments in Europe, joining an oversubscribed $2.5m pre-seed round led by SVV with continuing support from Antler and participation by other leading fintech investors. Here is why we invested.

The problem

The agentic era is transforming enterprises, with AI agents capable of researching, planning, drafting, negotiating, and deciding. Yet they halt at the critical final step: payment. Payments remain the unsolved 'last mile' for AI in a B2B context. Traditional payment rails were not designed for autonomous agents; their existing compliance layers, authentication requirements, and approval workflows cannot cleanly map onto agentic systems. Although enterprises seek the efficiency of AI, they are fundamentally blocked by the absence of a trust layer that can interface with agentic systems. This is precisely what Ralio is solving.

This gap represents one of the most commercially important infrastructure opportunities in technology right now.

A large and growing market

The B2B payments market moves $80 trillion globally every year and is growing at 10% annually, projected to reach $180 trillion by 2033.

According to Accenture, 87% of financial institutions believe trust will be the biggest barrier to agentic payments adoption, and 85% state their current systems are insufficient for high-volume, agent-initiated transactions. The demand signal for this solution is loud and clear.

How Ralio solves the problem

Ralio is the trust layer between AI agents and payment rails, enforcing spending rules, verifying agent identity, and logging every decision before money moves between businesses.

It sits inside the enterprise tech stack and handles compliance, authentication, and safe execution at every step. Finance teams stay in control. The agent does the work.

The starting wedge is Accounts Payable. AP workflows are repetitive, rule-based, and high in transaction volume. The finance team is not replaced. They are freed up.

Tailwinds and defensibility

The timing is compelling. OpenAI and Perplexity have launched commerce features in recent months. Mastercard and Visa have both rolled out agentic payment interfaces. Amazon is experimenting with AI-driven supplier payments.

The market is validating at lightning speed.

Ralio, built on open-source protocols, has already adapted AP2 to serve B2B use cases specifically. The defensibility compounds over time. Compliance integrations, payment partner depth, and embedded workflow switching costs will be difficult to replicate. Getting in early as the trusted name for enterprise agentic payments is the prize.

We see a path to Ralio becoming the household brand for trust in agentic payments, the way Stripe became synonymous with internet payments a decade ago.

The team: Ralio’s superpower

Ghali comes from Papernest, Alan, and Lumapps, three companies that scaled aggressively across European enterprise markets. He knows how to sell to large organisations, how to build trust with procurement teams, and how to move fast inside regulated industries.

Leonardo built a payments company from scratch and served as a senior engineer at Form 3, one of the most respected payments infrastructure businesses in Europe. He understands the technical depth this problem requires.

Together, they bring something rare: operator credibility combined with deep domain knowledge, in a market where credibility is everything.

We are proud to be backing Ghali and Leonardo at pre-seed. The infrastructure for the agentic economy needs to be built. They are the right team to build it.

Welcome to the Adeline portfolio, Ralio.

Adeline Arts and Science is a London-based family office investing in early-stage technology companies.