Sponge

Sponge develops financial infrastructure specifically designed for the emerging agent economy. The company provides a platform enabling autonomous agents to hold and manage funds, facilitating transactions through bank accounts, cards, and cryptocurrency. This allows agents to autonomously acquire services such as email access, browser usage, and premium data, removing the need for human intervention in these processes. Simultaneously, Sponge offers businesses a streamlined method to onboard and accept payments from these agents, simplifying direct service sales.

The company was co-founded by Eric Zhang, Jae Choi, and Rishab Luthra, all of whom bring prior experience from Stripe Crypto. Their collective background in financial technology and digital currencies informs Sponge’s approach to enabling seamless, automated financial interactions. The founders identified a critical need for dedicated payment rails as AI-driven and other autonomous agents increasingly participate in economic exchanges.

Sponge targets both the autonomous agents themselves and businesses looking to engage with this new class of digital clientele. The company’s vision is to establish itself as the foundational financial layer for the agent economy, making it effortlessly simple for agents to transact and for businesses to commercialize their offerings to this evolving market.