Investors Scrutinize Agent-Economy Startups' Unit Economics More Closely in Q3

## The Growth-First Phase Is Ending Early agent-economy investment rounds were often justified primarily on user growth and transaction volume, with less scrutiny on whether the underlying unit economics actually worked at scale. ## What's Being Asked Now Investors are increasingly pressing on questions like the actual compute cost per completed transaction, how pricing holds up as usage scales, and whether growth is coming from genuinely useful automation or from cheap incentives that won't persist. ## What This Means for Startups Startups able to show a clear, sustainable path from transaction volume to margin are finding funding easier to secure than those relying on growth metrics alone -- a shift that's starting to separate durable agent-economy businesses from hype-driven ones.