Alvaro Morales

Alvaro Morales is the co-founder and chief executive of Orb, a billing platform that helps software and AI companies align pricing with customer usage, operating costs, and measurable value. His work addresses a fundamental problem in AI economics: products become more expensive to deliver precisely as customers use them more.

Morales studied computer science at MIT and worked at Asana from 2016 to 2021, advancing into engineering leadership. After encountering the complexity of changing prices and packaging at a growing software company, he founded Orb in 2021 with fellow Asana engineer Kshitij Grover, who became its chief technology officer. Their platform separates raw product-usage data from pricing logic, enabling companies to adjust subscriptions, consumption charges, and negotiated terms without rebuilding billing infrastructure. Orb launched publicly in 2023 with customers including Airbyte, Dune, Neon, and Materialize; its subsequent customers included Vercel, Glean, Replit, and Supabase.

How Morales approaches AI monetization

• The AI pricing paradox: Inference expenses can increase faster than revenue, turning customer growth into margin erosion. Morales advocates metered, tiered, credit-based, and hybrid pricing that reflects actual cost and usage.

• Price agents by resources, tasks, or results: Token charges track computation; task-based pricing maps to completed work; outcome-based pricing links payment to realized value. Outcomes work only when customers and vendors agree on an objectively measurable result, making resolved support tickets easier to price than creative or sales contributions. His AI-agent pricing framework also emphasizes audit trails, spending controls, and clear attribution.

• Test pricing before customers see it: Orb Simulations emerged after customers modeled unreleased products using provisional pricing structures. Teams can backtest alternative plans against historical usage, comparing projected revenue with the impact on individual customer bills.

• Separate predictable and variable revenue: Morales argues that traditional annual recurring revenue obscures AI-business performance when fixed commitments and fluctuating consumption are combined. He distinguishes contracted revenue from usage-driven revenue and considers gross profit alongside growth.

Orb also expanded into contract-to-cash automation, converting signed agreements and usage data into invoice schedules. Adyen acquired the company for $335 million in a transaction completed July 1, 2026. Orb continues as a standalone product within Adyen, connecting flexible billing with global payments infrastructure.