This startup tracks the hidden computing costs of AI agents

This article is a part of Startup Spotlight, a series that features young, up-and-coming startups.

Image credit: Timmy Loen

In 2025, Aditya Sonkar and Prakash Kushwaha watched software giants struggle to monetize new AI agents. 

Large firms changed pricing models multiple times, trying to charge for digital labor. The founders launched Paygent to solve this infrastructure gap.

😟 Problem

The shift to autonomous software breaks traditional seat-based subscription models. Faster AI agents complete tasks in less time, requiring less human supervision, and reducing revenue for companies charging per userby the minute or user. About 37% of AI startups operate with a structural cost-price imbalance.

Unpredictable token usage often causes infrastructure costs to spike tenfold during production. Developers risk billing a customer US$100 for an outcome that silently costs US$120 in backend compute power.

💡 Solution

The startup operates as a financial command center for AI development. Paygent transitions companies from activity tracking to outcome-based revenue models. The platform offers several core features, including:

• Cost tracking: measures real-time API third-party expenses to prevent margin leakage.
• Outcome billing: shifts monetization away from subscriptions toward invoicing for completed digital tasks.
• Value benchmarking: compares automated workflow costs against human-equivalent salaries in specific geographic markets.
• Automated collections: manage invoice generation and payment processing upon task completion.

Image credit: Paygent

📊 Market size

The company identifies a serviceable obtainable market of US$925 million, with an initial focus on Tier 2 scaling AI startups as its beachhead customer segment. 

🤝 Team

• Aditya Sonkar. Co-founder. He has a decade of startup experience and previously scaled RevMeUp, a social commerce platform, to over 100,000 users.
• Prakash Kushwaha. Co-founder. He has nine years of experience leading engineering teams and previously co-founded AgroWave, an agritech supply chain startup focused on connecting farmers with retailers.
• Nihal Dwivedi. Founding engineer. He focuses on building the company’s infrastructure and product systems.

🚀 Traction

• The startup manages 11 active pilots with two already deployed in production environments.
• Early users report margin improvements of 15% to 20% after identifying inefficient background resources.
• The team has secured 12 letters of intent from an initial pipeline of 500 target profiles.

🏆 Competition

Traditional platforms like Stripe and Chargebee manage fixed subscriptions effectively while struggling with high-frequency computing costs. Modern usage-based tools like Orb and Metronome track high-volume metering without providing visibility into underlying model margins.

💰 Financials

🚩 Risks