Orthogonal

Active

Agentic Payments for APIs

Winter 2026Founded 20252 peopleSan Francisco, CA, USA

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AI insightcan contain mistakes

Agent API MarketplaceMarketplaceAI agents, API providers, developersLow competition

Moat

Agent-native payment and discovery; pay-per-use eliminates friction; network effects grow with agent adoption.

Key risk

Emerging market; agent adoption uncertain; competing against direct API integrations.

Why now

Agent adoption accelerating; agents need tool discovery; pay-per-use ideal for autonomous systems.

Competitors

Emerging space, direct API integrations

About

APIs weren't built for agents. Orthogonal fixes that. We enable agentic payments so any agent can instantly discover, access, and pay for hundreds of APIs. No subscriptions, no sales calls, just pay per use. API providers list once and get paid every time an agent calls their API.

Founders · 2

Christian PickettFounder

Coinbase

Cofounder @ Orthogonal - Agentic Payments for APIs Prev. Vercel & Coinbase

LinkedIn ↗X ↗

Bera SogutFounder

Google

Amazon

Cofounder @ Orthogonal - Agentic Payments for APIs Prev. Google, Amazon Robotics | 2x ACM ICPC World Finalist

LinkedIn ↗X ↗

Launch

Launched on Y Combinator · Jan 2026

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APIs weren’t built for agents, we fixed that.

Orthogonal provides a unified gateway for AI agents and developers to discover and pay for hundreds of paid APIs via MCP or SDK, removing key management and billing complexity. It enables instant access to APIs, offers a credits-based payment model, and targets API providers to list and monetise their offerings.