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Orthogonal

Category: AI Infrastructure

An API gateway and marketplace that enables AI agents to discover, access, and pay for hundreds of premium APIs through a single MCP server or SDK, with pay-per-call billing. Orthogonal was founded in 2025. The company is led by Christian Pickett. Based in San Francisco, California. Team size: 1-10. Total funding raised: $4.3M. Latest round: Seed. Key investors include Pantera Capital, Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Decasonic, Blast, Outbound, Surreal.

Founded
2025
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Team size
1-10
Total funding
$4.3M

Value proposition

One API key and MCP server gives AI agents instant access to 50+ premium APIs with pay-per-call billing — no per-vendor onboarding, no API key management, no subscriptions. API providers list once and get paid automatically per request.

Products and solutions

Orthogonal MCP Server (Model Context Protocol integration for Claude, Cursor, OpenAI Codex), TypeScript SDK (@orth/sdk), REST API, CLI (@orth/cli), API marketplace with 50+ premium providers across search, scraping, datasets, and AI model APIs, Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) for multi-method payments

Unique value

The only unified API marketplace purpose-built for AI agents, combining agentic payments (HTTP 402), natural language API discovery, and a single MCP/SDK interface — enabling autonomous agents to discover, negotiate, and pay for APIs at runtime without human intervention.

Target customer

AI agent developers and builders; API providers looking to distribute to the agent economy; GTM teams using AI agents for sales, marketing, and recruiting workflows

Industries served

Go-to-market (sales/marketing), Recruiting, Investor intelligence, AI agent infrastructure

Technology advantage

First-class MCP-native architecture; HTTP 402 payment semantics for machine-to-machine micropayments; Natural language API discovery; Provider routing with automatic failover, rate limit management, and response normalization; Unified billing abstraction across all providers; Pay-per-call pricing starting at $0.01

How they differentiate

Unlike general API aggregators (RapidAPI) that are built for human developers, Orthogonal is purpose-built for autonomous AI agents with MCP-native integration, agentic payments (HTTP 402), natural language API discovery, and no per-vendor credential management. Unlike Composio/Toolhouse which focus on tool integrations, Orthogonal focuses on the payment and discovery layer for paid APIs.

Main competitors

Toolhouse, Composio, Arcade.ai, RapidAPI

Key partnerships

Tempo (Machine Payments Protocol / MPP), 50+ API providers including Apollo, ContactOut, People Data Labs, ScrapeGraphAI, PredictLeads, Composio, Aviato, Coresignal, Ocean.io, and others, Early customers include Precip (YC W24), Riveter (YC F24)

Notable customers

Precip (YC W24), Riveter (YC F24), Andi (YC W22), Fiber AI (YC S23), Sixtyfour (YC X25), MouseCat (YC W26), Hobbes

Major milestones

Founded 2025, Accepted into Y Combinator Winter 2026 batch, Raised $4.3M seed round led by Pantera Capital (June 2026), Launched MCP server, SDK, and CLI, Partnered with Tempo for Machine Payments Protocol, Onboarded 50+ API providers

Market positioning

Early-stage YC W26 startup competing in the emerging MCP marketplace/infrastructure space. Positioned as the payment and discovery layer for the agent economy, targeting the intersection of API marketplaces and AI agent infrastructure.

Geographic focus

United States (San Francisco), global via API distribution

About Christian Pickett

Prev. Vercel & Coinbase (payments, billing)

Official website: