Will payment terms like Net-30, Net-60, or Net-90 in the B2B space soon be a thing of the past? Causa Prima is working on a simpler and more efficient solution. And the process could accelerate further, as the company has now secured pre-seed funding of more than €8 million (€10 million).
The funding round is led by Creandum, with additional investors including Kfund, HelloWorld, and business angels from companies such as Qonto, Pennylane, SAP, ING, SoFi, Lidl, and DeepMind. With the fresh capital, Causa Prima plans to expand its engineering and product teams at its Munich and Madrid locations.
Former Taulia team aims to create infrastructure for AI-driven B2B transactions
Behind Causa Prima are experienced entrepreneurs who have already built core infrastructure for global corporate payments. Co-founder Maex Ament once founded Taulia, a pioneer in dynamic discounting, which was later acquired by SAP. According to the company, the platform most recently processed payment volumes of approximately €43 billion (€50 billion) per quarter among more than five million suppliers.
Together with Henrik Gebbing, co-founder of crypto custodian Finoa, and Philip Stanislaus, who led more than 600 enterprise security audits at Oak Security, Ament now wants to establish the next development stage in B2B finance: an agent-to-agent network for B2B financial processes in which AI agents of buyers and suppliers automatically negotiate and process payment terms, invoice approvals, and disputes—in other words, an infrastructure where AI agents interact independently with each other. More than 3,000 active users are already using the network.
AI agents to automate disputes and payment negotiations
Causa Prima’s central thesis: while companies increasingly deploy AI agents for purchasing, invoice processing, and payment processes, the infrastructure for communication between systems of different companies is still missing.
Current accounts payable and accounts receivable solutions are each designed for one side of the transaction. As soon as discrepancies occur between buyer and supplier—such as invoice differences or payment terms—manual intervention is still required.
Causa Prima connects both sides within a shared network. AI agents can independently exchange information, clarify open questions, and negotiate optimal payment terms.
Today, when a company with thousands of suppliers encounters a disputed invoice, it often results in weeks of coordination via email between the finance departments of both companies. According to Causa Prima, AI agents can resolve these processes within seconds.
Dynamic discounting to become scalable for the first time
Another focus area is early payment discounts. Suppliers grant price reductions when invoices are paid earlier.
Although such models offer significant cost-saving potential for large companies, implementation often fails due to the complexity of coordinating with thousands of suppliers. Through automated negotiations between AI agents, Causa Prima wants to make these processes scalable for the first time.
For co-founder Maex Ament, the company builds directly on the idea of dynamic discounting that he already shaped significantly at Taulia:
“The problem in B2B finance was never within a single company, but always between two companies. When both sides work with agents, disputes and rigid payment terms become increasingly obsolete.”
Creandum bets on experience from SAP, fintech, and security sectors
Lead investor Creandum sees the founding team’s operational experience as a decisive factor. Simon Schmincke, partner at Creandum, adds:
“Soon AI agents will stand on both sides of every B2B transaction, and today’s infrastructure—designed for humans—won’t hold up. This team has already created the infrastructure that almost every supplier worldwide now uses to get paid. Therefore, nobody knows better what doesn’t work, and nobody is better positioned to fix the problem. With Causa Prima and its agent-to-agent network, early payment is no longer a dream that finance teams abandoned years ago, but becomes the new standard.”
The end of fixed payment terms?
Long-term, Causa Prima pursues an ambitious vision. Classic payment terms such as Net-30, Net-60, or Net-90-day invoices emerged historically mainly because people needed time to process transactions.
If AI agents can negotiate and make decisions in real time in the future, rigid payment terms could be replaced by dynamic and situational agreements. With this, the startup addresses a market that has so far been largely characterized by manual processes.
