Anchorage Digital Partners with BlockRun to Bring Pay-per-Request Inference to Institutional Research Agents

TL;DR: Institutional researchers can trial more than 80 AI models through BlockRun, paying per request.

Anchorage Digital, home to America's first federally chartered crypto bank, today announced a partnership with BlockRun, an AI inference router built on the x402 payment standard, to give institutional research agents access to pay-per-request services.

For institutional research teams, an agent runs on a stream of small model requests for preparing research that informs trading decisions, analyzing DeFi liquidity data, and summarizing governance proposals. Paying per request fits that pattern because each payment settles when BlockRun delivers the response. A typical chat request costs a fraction of a cent, though some models and longer requests cost more.

Under the partnership, a research agent connected to Agentic Banking from Anchorage Digital Bank N.A. reaches more than 80 models through BlockRun from a single endpoint. The agent pays for each request over x402, an open standard for paying over HTTP, and the payment settles through Anchorage Digital Bank.

"Running a hot wallet on every agent reintroduces the trade-off Anchorage Digital was founded to solve. Keys secured too tightly risk being lost, and keys kept too accessible risk being stolen. Through our partnership with BlockRun, research agents pay for each request from Anchorage Digital Bank, with no wallet on the agent to fund or replenish." —Nathan McCauley, CEO and Co-Founder, Anchorage Digital

What the partnership covers

• Agents don't hold the funds they spend. Paying per request usually means giving each agent its own stablecoin wallet. An agent is untrusted software and anything in that wallet can be sent away, so teams keep balances small and top them up often. Agentic Banking is built within a regulated bank and designed for institutional agents. Funds stay at Anchorage Digital Bank, and the agent pays for each request from there.

• Inference for research workloads. BlockRun routes chat requests to models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, DeepSeek, and others. A research agent can send a governance proposal to one model and DeFi liquidity data to another, and BlockRun quotes a price for each request before it runs.

• One endpoint for model access. Model providers typically require an account, an API key, and billing before an agent sends its first request. The Agentic Banking inference endpoint accepts OpenAI-compatible and Anthropic Messages API requests, so agents built on either API can choose a model per request without repeating that setup at each provider.

"Agents should pay for model access the way they use it, one request at a time. x402 makes that possible, and Anchorage Digital Bank gives institutional research teams a way to fund those payments without placing a wallet on every agent." —Vicky Fu, Founder, BlockRun

How the trial works

Ahead of full client onboarding, researchers at institutions join the trial individually.

• Identity verification first. Participants complete individual identity verification (KYC) before joining.
• $100 per participant. The credit is funded by BlockRun, shared across all of a participant's agents, and does not reset. Requests that exceed the remaining trial credit are declined.
• One month. Enrollment lasts a month from the day a participant joins.
• BlockRun services only. The credit pays BlockRun only, and agents in the trial place no trades.
• Continuing after the trial. A participant who continues completes full client onboarding with Anchorage Digital Bank and funds their own usage.

Getting started

Researchers can request access to the trial at agentic@anchorage.com or through their Anchorage Digital relationship manager. The paid inference docs cover how agents call models and how each request is billed.

About BlockRun‍

BlockRun helps AI agents use money efficiently. Agents use BlockRun to buy more than 80 AI models, data services and tools from one endpoint. Each request is priced before it runs and paid for in USDC over x402. BlockRun was founded by Vicky Fu, formerly Head of Data Science at Circle. Learn more at blockrun.ai.

This post is intended for informational purposes only. It is not to be construed as and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase any securities in Anchor Labs, Inc., or any of its subsidiaries, and should not be relied upon to make any investment decisions. Furthermore, nothing within this announcement is intended to provide tax, legal, or investment advice and its contents should not be construed as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security or digital asset or to engage in any transaction therein. Anchorage Digital Bank National Association offers fiat custody services through the use of an FDIC-insured, licensed sub-custodian.