About Orthogonal
Orthogonal enables agentic payments so AI agents can discover, access, and pay for hundreds of APIs on a pay-per-use basis. It is part of YC's Winter 2026 batch. In June 2026 it raised a $4.3M seed round led by Pantera Capital.
What is Orthogonal?
What is Orthogonal?
Orthogonal starts from the idea that APIs were not built for agents. Most APIs require a human to sign up, negotiate a subscription, or talk to sales before an application can call them, which gets in the way of autonomous agents that need a tool on demand.
Orthogonal's answer is agentic payments. According to its YC profile, any agent can instantly discover, access, and pay for hundreds of APIs with no subscriptions and no sales calls, paying only per use. API providers list once and get paid every time an agent calls their API. The SaaS News describes the company as a discovery, orchestration, and payments layer for AI agents, with a multi-chain transaction routing framework for machine-to-machine payments.
Orthogonal was founded by Christian Pickett (CEO) and Bera Sogut (CTO) and is based in San Francisco. It is part of Y Combinator's Winter 2026 batch. In June 2026 it announced a $4.3M seed round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Decasonic, Blast, Outbound, and Surreal. The company said it would use the capital to grow its product engineering team and scale its transaction routing framework.
Pros
- Pay-per-use API access without subscriptions or sales calls
- Lets agents discover and call new APIs on demand
- API providers list once and get paid per call
- Supports machine-to-machine payment flows across chains
Cons
- Crypto-based payment rails may not fit every enterprise's procurement policies
- Catalog breadth depends on providers choosing to list
- Early-stage infrastructure still proving adoption
How to Use Orthogonal
- 1Visit the website
Go to orthogonal.com to sign up as an agent developer or API provider.
- 2Connect your agent
Give your agent access to Orthogonal so it can discover available APIs.
- 3Fund usage
Set up payment so the agent can pay per call without subscriptions.
- 4List an API (providers)
API providers list once and receive payment every time an agent uses their API.