Sokin's Tom Steer on the infrastructure behind agentic finance

Sokin, a global business payments provider, has published its financial performance for the first time: a $90 million net revenue run-rate at the end of the first half of 2026, $45 million of audited net revenue in 2025 in a profitable year, and more than $9 billion in payment volume, with the company tracking to more than $120 million run-rate by December. Founder and chief executive Vroon Modgill framed the disclosure around a larger argument, that in agentic finance the durable advantage sits in the regulated infrastructure an AI agent connects to rather than in the agent itself.

Tom Steer is Sokin's chief financial officer. He joined from FT Partners, where he advised fintech companies on capital raises and M&A, and previously held finance leadership roles at Zepz. In written answers to Disrupts, he explained why a private company would start reporting now, what an agent needs from the infrastructure beneath it, and what would make Sokin miss its December number.

The decision to disclose, Steer said, follows years of building. "Since our B2B pivot we have been focused on building global payment and licensing infrastructure, and now we feel we are seeing the benefits of that investment and the numbers speak for themselves." Around $12 million of net cash investment over that period built the business as it stands. "That level of capital efficiency is something we are particularly proud of."

Transparency also matters more as the business scales. "Customers, banking partners and regulators want to understand the financial strength of the companies they rely on to move and manage their money. There is still a lot to build, but we can now demonstrate the strength of the model rather than simply describe it."

What an agent actually needs

Modgill's letter argued that the moat is not the AI agent but the infrastructure it connects to. Steer put that in concrete terms. "An AI agent can identify what needs to happen, but it still needs regulated financial infrastructure underneath it to move the money. At its simplest, that means an account that can hold the currency, a licence that permits the transaction and a rail that can settle it."

Replicating the AI layer, he said, is far easier than building that. "Licences in particular take years to establish, and we already have 36 country licences with plans to expand this rapidly." For an agent to be genuinely useful it needs infrastructure "that lets it act across the full lifecycle of money rather than simply recommend the next step".

A person still approves every payment

Customers will be able to connect Sokin to their own AI tools through Model Context Protocol. In practice, Steer said, a customer connects the tools it already uses directly into Sokin's infrastructure. "From there, the agent can monitor cash and FX exposure, review payment details, manage currency conversions, create beneficiaries and prepare everything for approval, all within limits the business sets. It removes the work of assembling the picture across multiple banks, platforms and spreadsheets before anyone can decide anything."

Over time, he expects that to change the finance function. "Instead of manually executing and reconciling transactions, teams set the policies and parameters, and agents operate within them. That is where we see agentic treasury going."

On stablecoins, Sokin built its own infrastructure this year and owns the stack rather than renting it. Moving a stablecoin between wallets is relatively straightforward, Steer said; turning it into usable money in the currency and market where a business needs it is much harder. "The fiat leg is a banking and regulatory challenge. You need licences, local accounts, banking relationships and settlement infrastructure to move between digital assets and fiat currencies reliably."

Owning more of the stack gives control over the economics and the customer experience. "If you rent a rail, you are dependent on another provider's pricing, risk appetite and infrastructure." Not all of it was built from scratch: acquiring Genpaid earlier this year accelerated the stablecoin capability, "while the regulated layer underneath it took years for us to establish".

The US, and being the pipes

The United States is now Sokin's largest and fastest-growing market, at more than 40 per cent of revenue. Steer attributed that to enterprise API and platform integrations, with embedded finance finding its strongest traction there as fintechs and financial platforms build financial capabilities into their own products rather than send customers elsewhere. A US investor base, with Morgan Stanley backing the company early and Prysm Capital leading its Series B, has helped with relationships and credibility. On regulation, he said the US is complex because a firm operates across federal and state layers at once; applications are in progress and more are planned.

Embedded partners' customers never see Sokin's name, and Steer is comfortable with that. "We want Sokin to be the layer other businesses build and run on; how they transact, manage and optimise money in an agentic world. We are happy to be the pipes, not the brand."

It changes what the product is. "When a business uses us directly, our interface is the product. When a fintech or platform embeds us, our API is the product, so uptime, latency, documentation, and support therefore become fundamental because our performance directly affects the experience that partner provides to its own customers." Pricing differs too: embedded partnerships tend to be larger and longer, with lower acquisition costs and thinner per-transaction pricing across a much larger and stickier base. "Once Sokin is embedded into a partner's product, our growth increasingly follows theirs."

Asked what could make the company miss $120 million by December, Steer pointed to timing rather than demand. Embedded partnerships involve longer integration cycles than direct customer relationships, so "revenue therefore arrives in larger increments, and the timing can depend on when a partner completes its integration and begins moving meaningful volume". The target, he said, "is within reach on the current trajectory".

Sokin holds licences across 36 countries, with further applications in progress, and moves money across more than 170 countries in more than 70 currencies through 18 direct banking partnerships and its own settlement infrastructure.