PANews reported on May 18th that AEON, focusing on the settlement layer of the "agentic economy," has completed an $8 million pre-seed funding round, led by YZi Labs, with participation from IDG Capital, HashKey Capital, Stanford Blockchain Builders Fund, Oak Grove Ventures, and others. Specific valuation and round structure were not disclosed. AEON stated that it will use this funding to build a settlement infrastructure supporting value exchange between AI agents, and launched its first AI payment product in May, supporting AI agents connecting over 50 million physical merchants globally. The project has also partnered with BNB Chain to launch the native product x402 Facilitator, providing service providers within the BNB ecosystem with verifiable transactions, on-chain settlement, and tamper-proof credentials, and plans to deepen cooperation with partners such as Coinbase and BNB Chain.