Performances
Comparison
Details
This content is generated by RD AI and is for reference only
Orthogonal is a unified API layer for AI agents, positioned as the "discovery, orchestration, and payment layer of the internet." It lets agents describe needs in natural language, automatically discover and call suitable third-party APIs (such as search, scraping, email, etc.), and unifies authentication, billing, and payment flows. Developers can integrate via MCP, SDK, REST API, or CLI, using a single key to access all services and paying per call, without registering or managing accounts for each API individually.
Fundraising
Follow Updates
Follow Lists
People
About Orthogonal
Orthogonal is an infrastructure layer for AI agents. It provides a unified API that lets agents discover, call, and pay for third-party services on demand. Instead of hard-coding a few tools, an agent can search a registry of available APIs, select the right one, and execute the call automatically. Payments are handled per request through credits or smart contracts, so no human billing or API key management is needed.
The core problem it solves is the fragmentation of AI tooling. Today, agents are limited to pre-integrated services, and connecting to new APIs requires manual work. Orthogonal creates a marketplace-like layer where agents can dynamically find and use services, and service providers can monetize their APIs without building their own payment systems.
In the past six months (March to September 2026), Orthogonal has focused on expanding its service catalog and improving the developer experience. It has added more third-party APIs and refined its agent-to-agent payment flow. The platform remains in an early stage, with limited adoption outside a small developer community. No major security incidents or service outages have been reported, but the network effect is still weak, and the long-term viability depends on attracting both more service providers and more agent developers.
Orthogonal was founded by former leaders from Coinbase, Vercel, Google, and Amazon Robotics, positioning itself as the discovery, orchestration, and payment infrastructure layer for AI agents.
The product is already live in production, supporting over 35 APIs including Apollo, People Data Labs, and others. Developers can integrate via SDK, MCP, or REST API, enabling agents to discover and call services instantly.
In June 2026, Orthogonal completed a $4.3 million seed round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Decasonic, and others. The funds will be used to expand the platform to thousands of services and grow the engineering and go-to-market teams.
In the past six months, Orthogonal's key progress:
Raised a $4.3M seed round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Decasonic, Blast, etc. Funds will accelerate core platform development and expand engineering and go-to-market teams.
Platform entered production: serving GTM teams and AI-native startups, integrating 35+ APIs including Apollo, People Data Labs, Coresignal; official site shows catalog grown to 50+ providers and 800+ endpoints, covering lead search, data enrichment, compute purchase, image generation, etc.
Multi-rail payments: in addition to fiat, supports x402 and MPP agent-native payment standards; working with Stripe Privy/Tempo teams to streamline agent payment execution.
Future focus: Orthogonal aims to become the default front door for agents on the internet, planning to expand from dozens to thousands of integrated services within 12 months, and scale active developers/agents from hundreds to a much larger ecosystem; continue strengthening the discovery layer, runtime, and payment infrastructure, positioning as the "app store" and value-capturing layer for the agentic economy.
Orthogonal (YC W26) was founded by two co-founders:
Christian Pickett (Co-founder & CEO): Previously on the Payments team at Coinbase, overseeing the full payment lifecycle; then at Vercel on the billing platform, leading the Enterprise/Pro usage dashboards and 3DS domain purchase flow. Also worked at BlackBerry and IBM. Holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from McGill and an M.S. in AI from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Bera Sogut (Co-founder): Ex-Google engineer who worked on reCAPTCHA and Maps APIs; former SDE intern at Amazon Robotics. Two-time ACM ICPC World Finalist. B.Sc. in Mathematics and Computer Science from McGill.
No other current core executives are publicly disclosed.