April 14, 2026
London-based fintech startup Ralio has secured €2.1 million ($2.5 million) in a pre-seed funding round to accelerate the development of its AI-focused payments platform and expand its engineering team.
The oversubscribed round was led by Sure Valley Ventures (SVV), with participation from Seed X, Love Ventures, Plug and Play, rule30, Adeline Arts and Science, Endurance Ventures, Campus Fund, fintech investor Alan Morgan, and continued backing from Antler.
Bridging the Gap Between AI and Finance
Founded in 2025 by Ghali Bennani Laafiret and Leonardo Rosales, Ralio is building what it describes as a “trust layer” for agentic payments—enabling AI systems to safely and independently execute financial transactions.
As AI agents evolve from simple productivity tools into autonomous economic actors, the financial ecosystem has struggled to keep up. Most existing payment systems are still designed for human interaction, relying heavily on manual approvals, authentication processes, and traditional fraud detection methods.
Ralio aims to solve this by introducing a dedicated infrastructure layer that embeds safeguards such as identity verification, audit trails, and rule-based controls directly into AI-driven transactions. This allows businesses to trust AI agents to move money securely across various payment rails, including bank transfers, cards, and stablecoins.
A New Layer of Accountability
Unlike other solutions in the agentic finance space that focus on guiding what AI agents should do, Ralio focuses on whether a transaction should happen at all. Its system acts as a checkpoint—verifying intent, enforcing compliance rules, and logging every decision before any payment is executed.
CEO and co-founder Ghali Bennani Laafiret emphasized the importance of this approach, noting that as AI begins to handle financial decisions, ensuring accountability and security becomes critical. The newly raised funds will help the company accelerate product development and scale its platform to meet growing demand.
Strong Investor Confidence
Investors see Ralio as a key player in the future of autonomous finance. Adam French, Partner at Antler, highlighted that enabling AI to safely move value is one of the biggest challenges for the next decade. He pointed to the team’s strong domain expertise and rapid progress as key reasons behind their support.
Backed by Antler from the beginning, Ralio’s pre-seed round was three times oversubscribed within just three months of its founding—signaling strong market confidence in its vision.
The Future of Agentic Finance
As businesses increasingly adopt AI-driven systems, the need for secure and scalable financial infrastructure becomes more urgent. Ralio is positioning itself at the center of this transformation, building the foundation that could enable AI agents to operate as trusted financial actors in a rapidly evolving digital economy.
