Rent a confidential VM with USDC in two HTTP requests, no signup

Agentgates launched a pay-per-hour confidential VM service (Intel TDX) aimed at autonomous agents rather than humans, requiring no account or API key: a wallet pays in USDC via the x402 protocol, and the paying wallet owns, reads, renews and destroys the machine. An unpaid request returns HTTP 402 with per-network pricing, and after an EIP-3009 transfer authorization on Base or Polygon (or a Solana transfer) settles on chain, the machine provisions and billing starts only once it reads running. Each machine carries a remote-attestation quote with a public proof page, and environment values are sealed to the machine and never stored.

Most cloud APIs assume a person: a signup form, a card, an API key pasted into a config file. An agent that needs a machine for an hour has none of those. It has a wallet. Agentgates https://agentgates.ai sells confidential VMs Intel TDX by the hour to exactly that buyer. There is no account. The wallet that pays owns the machine, reads its state, renews it and destroys it. Ask for a machine with no payment and the API answers 402 Payment Required with the exact price on every network it accepts. Asking is free and repeatable: nothing runs and nothing is charged. curl -s -X POST https://api.agentgates.ai/api/compute/deployments \ -H 'content-type: application/json' \ -d '{"plan":"compute.starter","hours":1,"image":"nginx:alpine"}' | jq -r '.accepts | "\ .network : \ .maxAmountRequired | tonumber / 1000000 USDC"' Each entry of accepts is one network's own offer: the amount in USDC atomic units, the token contract and the address to pay. The plans and their live prices are in GET /api/compute/catalog . Sign the amount an EIP-3009 transfer authorization on Base or Polygon, a transfer on Solana and resend the same request with the payment attached. The official x402 v2 client does both steps: js import { wrapFetchWithPaymentFromConfig } from '@x402/fetch'; import { ExactEvmScheme } from '@x402/evm'; import { privateKeyToAccount } from 'viem/accounts'; const pay = wrapFetchWithPaymentFromConfig fetch, { schemes: { network: 'eip155:8453', client: new ExactEvmScheme privateKeyToAccount process.env.EVM PRIVATE KEY } , } ; const res = await pay 'https://api.agentgates.ai/api/compute/deployments', { method: 'POST', headers: { 'content-type': 'application/json' }, body: JSON.stringify { plan: 'compute.starter', hours: 1, image: 'nginx:alpine', port: 80 } , } ; console.log await res.json ; // { deploymentId, status: "provisioning", ... } Settlement confirms on chain, the machine provisions, and the billed clock starts when it reads running , not at payment. A wallet that cannot cover the amount is refused before anything moves: the answer says how much it needs and how much it holds. The full example, which prints the price and pays only with --yes , is in the repo https://github.com/agentgates-ai/agentgates/blob/main/examples/buy-a-vm.mjs . The machine's memory and disk are encrypted by the processor, and every machine carries a remote-attestation quote with a public proof page, so you can check the hardware before you hand it a secret. Environment values you send are sealed to the machine and never stored. Watch expiresAt and renew with POST /api/compute/deployments/{id}/renew and {"hours": 1} , paid the same way. Renewals stack on the end of the clock, so an agent can keep a machine alive an hour at a time. /api/compute/docs https://mcp.agentgates.ai/compute npx skills add agentgates-ai/agentgates