NEAR joining the x402 fund this round is like planting a flag in the payment infrastructure of the AI agent economy—30+ chains’ liquidity plus privacy inference, with big ambitions.

NEAR Foundation announced that it is joining the x402 Foundation under the Linux Foundation, becoming a standard member, and working with Google, AWS, Stripe, and others to advance open-payment infrastructure and transaction standards for the AI agent economy. It will provide technical support on the x402 protocol, including cross-chain liquidity, private inference, confidential execution, and agent discovery, covering more than 30 chains and 180 types of assets. x402 was founded by Coinbase and contributed to the Linux Foundation. It is an open-source internet payment protocol designed to support AI agents, applications, and API-driven automated payments.