Octen Expands AI-Agent Search With 10-Millisecond Results, $20 Plan

What changed

Octen, a roughly one-year-old startup founded by an ex-Alibaba engineer, is expanding its search service for AI agents. It says the service can locate web pages in roughly 10 milliseconds, adds image search, and costs $20 a month for unlimited web searches.

Why it matters

Octen is selling search as infrastructure for AI agents, not just as a box where people type questions. The pitch is simple: fast retrieval, broader inputs and a flat monthly bill.

The $20 plan is the sharper part of the offer. Unlimited searches make usage costs easier to predict for developers building agents that may search repeatedly, although the report does not establish whether the price can hold up commercially or what infrastructure supports it.

Speed matters only if the results are useful. Ten milliseconds sounds striking, but the report provides no independent performance benchmark, search-quality measure or indication of how much capacity Octen can handle. For now, the meaningful test is whether AI-agent developers find the combination of speed, image search and predictable pricing good enough to use in real products.