Building the Agent Control Layer

27 Companies 4 Categories

The OpenAI and Hugging Face incident showed that autonomous agents cannot be trusted to report or police their own behavior. As agents gain more authority, companies will need an independent control and evidence layer around them. This landscape focuses on new pure play companies building that layer rather than established security platforms expanding into agent security.

Filter and ordering

Category

Tool & MCP Security

7 companies

Agents increasingly rely on external tools to act. These products provide an independent control layer that decides which MCP servers or tools an agent is allowed to use.

AIR

air.security

AIR builds a security platform that sits between AI agents and the outside world to inspect and control the skills, MCP servers, plugins, and other add ons they use.

11-50 employees Employees Seed Stage 2026 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: High

Runlayer

runlayer.com

Runlayer builds a control plane for enterprise AI agents, with an MCP gateway, runtime security, policy controls, and audit visibility for the tools agents use.

11-50 Employees Series A Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Anomity

anomity.ai

Anomity is an enterprise security platform that gives teams visibility and policy control over AI agents, MCP servers, and related tools running on managed endpoints.

1-10 Employees Pre Seed Stage 2026 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Weak

Confidence: Medium

Lasso Security

lasso.security

Lasso Security builds an AI security platform that discovers, scores, monitors, and controls AI agents and their MCP tool connections so enterprises can use them more safely.

unknown Employees Seed Stage 2023 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Operant AI

operant.ai

Operant AI builds a runtime security platform that protects AI applications, agents, APIs, and MCP use in real time.

unknown Employees Series A Stage 2021 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Pillar Security

pillar.security

Pillar Security builds an AI security platform that helps enterprises discover, test, and control the risks around AI agents and tools in production.

unknown Employees Seed Stage 2023 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Medium

NeuralTrust

neuraltrust.ai

NeuralTrust builds a security platform that controls and monitors AI agents, their tool calls, and MCP connections so enterprises can govern what agents are allowed to access and do.

51-200 Employees Seed Stage 2022 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Category

Agent Runtime & Execution Security

11 companies

Approved tools can still be used in unsafe ways. These products provide an independent control layer around execution and stop actions that break policy before they affect external systems.

HiddenLayer

hiddenlayer.com

HiddenLayer is an AI security company that protects enterprise AI models and agentic applications from malicious actions and model attacks. ([hiddenlayer.com](https://www.hiddenlayer.com/about-us?utm_source=openai))

unknown Employees Series B Stage 2022 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Strong

Confidence: High

CodeIntegrity

codeintegrity.ai

CodeIntegrity builds secure runtime controls for AI agents, letting enterprises inspect, constrain, approve, and audit tool calls before they reach production systems.

small Employees Seed Stage 2024 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Medium

Manifold

manifold.security

Manifold provides runtime security and detection and response for AI agents on endpoints, showing what agents do at runtime and stopping risky actions before they affect external systems.

11-50 Employees Seed Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Capsule Security

capsulesecurity.io

Capsule Security is a runtime security platform for AI agents that monitors behavior in real time and blocks unsafe actions before they are executed.

11-50 Employees Seed Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Noma Security

noma.security

Noma Security is an enterprise AI security platform that helps companies discover, govern, test, and protect AI applications and agents at runtime.

unknown Employees Series B Stage 2023 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: High

Straiker

straiker.ai

Straiker builds security software that discovers, tests, and controls AI agents at runtime so unsafe actions can be blocked before they affect external systems.

unknown Employees Series A Stage 2024 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Strong

Confidence: High

WitnessAI

witness.ai

WitnessAI is an enterprise AI security platform that gives companies visibility, policy control, and runtime protection for AI usage, including agents and tools.

unknown Employees Series B Stage 2023 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Strong

Confidence: High

Evoke Security

evokesecurity.com

Evoke Security builds a security platform that gives enterprises visibility, policy control, and real time protection for AI agents.

2 to 10 employees Employees Pre Seed Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Medium

Quint Security

quintai.dev

Quint Security builds runtime behavioral security for AI agents. It watches what an agent actually does on the host and network, then blocks or flags actions that violate policy before they reach external systems.

1-10 Employees Unknown Stage Unknown Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Medium

NOFire

nofire.ai

NOFire builds a runtime control layer for AI agents in production, using a live production model to gate actions and prevent unsafe changes before they reach external systems.

11 to 50 Employees Seed Stage 2024 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

AI Score

aiscore.ai

AI Score builds an AI governance platform that monitors AI use across an organization and turns it into live controls, risk insight, and prioritized action.

2-10 Employees Pre Seed Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Medium

Category

Agent Testing & Assurance

4 companies

Some agent failures only appear when the system is pushed into difficult situations. These products test agents independently to expose dangerous behavior before it reaches production.

Gray Swan

grayswan.ai

Gray Swan is an AI security company that tests AI models and agents for unsafe behavior before and during deployment.

unknown Employees Series A Stage 2023 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Giskard

giskard.ai

Giskard builds software that tests and red teams AI agents and LLM applications before production, with a focus on finding security, reliability, and quality failures.

11-50 Employees Seed Stage 2021 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Verno Labs

vernolabs.ai

Verno Labs builds offensive security tools that test AI agents for vulnerabilities before they reach production.

2 to 10 employees Employees Pre Seed Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Medium

Trent AI

trent.ai

Trent AI builds an agentic security platform that scans code, cloud systems, and AI agents to find risk, propose fixes, and verify that those fixes landed before production.

2-10 employees Employees Seed Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Moderate

Confidence: Medium

Category

Agent Observability & Evidence

5 companies

Control is not enough if the evidence comes from the agent itself. These products create an independent record of execution so teams can verify what the agent actually did.

Paper Compute

papercompute.com

Paper Compute builds agent telemetry and evidence tools that capture what AI agents actually did, so teams can search, replay, audit, and reuse real sessions.

1-10 Employees Unknown Stage 2025 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Medium

Fact0

fact0.io

Fact0 provides a tamper evident audit layer for AI agents that records tool use and execution history so teams can prove what an agent actually did.

1-10 Employees Unknown Stage 2026 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Medium

Vaara

vaara.io

Vaara builds software that sits in front of AI agents, gates each tool call, and writes a tamper evident execution record so teams can verify what the agent actually did. ([vaara.io](https://vaara.io/?utm_source=openai))

unknown Employees Bootstrapped Stage 2026 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Medium

Agnys

agnys.net

Agnys is an evidence and observability layer for AI agents that records model calls, tool use, file edits, approvals, and other side effects into a tamper evident session history for review and compliance.

unknown Employees Unknown Stage Unknown Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength

Confidence: Low

Tenet AI

tenetai.dev

Tenet AI builds an auditability platform for AI agents that records decisions, reasoning, and execution evidence for regulated teams.

11-50 Employees Unknown Stage 2026 Founded
Trajectory Signals Strength Slight

Confidence: Medium

Investors

Top-tier and active investors

Top-tier investors who invested

Did not invest

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Insight Partners logo
Benchmark logo
General Catalyst logo
Y Combinator logo
Index logo
Balderton logo
Atomico logo
Point Nine Capital logo
Creandum logo

Other investors

Funding & Exits

Sep 2026

AI Score

Seed

EUR 4.6M • Investors: Fuel Ventures, GALLOS Technologies, Robert Mann, Mo El Husseiny, Alan Morgan

www.eu-startups.com

AI Score

Seed

$5.4M • Investors: Fuel Ventures, GALLOS Technologies, Alan Morgan, Mo El Husseiny, Robert Mann

Yahoo Finance / Sky News

Lasso Security

Funding round

$30M • Investors: ClearSky, Entrée Capital, iAngels, Singtel Innov8, Mindset, Swish Data

GlobeNewswire

HiddenLayer

Series B

$100M • Investors: Delta-v Capital, Ten Eleven Ventures, Morgan Stanley, M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund, Booz Allen Ventures

PR Newswire
Jun 2026

Straiker

Series A

$64M • Investors: Marathon Management Partners, Citi Ventures, Illuminate Financial, Workday Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed, GTM Capital, Rain Capital, Neva SGR, Firebolt Ventures, Sixty Degree Ventures

Straiker official company blog

Runlayer

Series A

$30M • Investors: Felicis, Khosla Ventures

Runlayer blog

NeuralTrust

Seed

$20M • Investors: Alstin Capital, VentureFriends, Seaya, Kibo Ventures, Banc Sabadell, EA Ventures Plug and Play Fund, Finaves

NeuralTrust
May 2026

Gray Swan

Series A

$40M • Investors: Wing Venture Capital, Madrona, Obvious Ventures, Snowflake Ventures, Hudson River Trading, Samsung Next, Magarac Venture Partners

Gray Swan

NOFire

Seed

$2.5M • Investors: Marathon Venture Capital, a16z venture scout fund

NOFire AI newsroom
Apr 2026

Trent AI

Seed

$13M • Investors: LocalGlobe, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, Avinash Bhat, Ippokratis Pandis, Tony Jebara, Yaniv Altshuler, Praveen Mandal, Alexander Sainty

Trent AI
Mar 2026

Manifold

Seed

$8M • Investors: Costanoa Ventures, Cherry Ventures, Rain Capital, Modern Technical Fund, Joe Sullivan, Vijay Bolina

Official funding announcement
Feb 2026
Jan 2026

WitnessAI

Strategic financing

$58M • Investors: Sound Ventures, Fin Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Forgepoint Capital Partners

official funding announcement
Nov 2025

Runlayer

Seed

$11M • Investors: Khosla Ventures, Felicis

TechCrunch

AI Score

Pre-Seed

GBP 750K • Investors: GALLOS Technologies

Soapbox VC
Oct 2025

NeuralTrust

Grant

EUR 2.4M • Investors: European Innovation Council

CORDIS
Jul 2025

Noma Security

Series B

$100M • Investors: Evolution Equity Partners, Ballistic Ventures, Glilot Capital

Noma Security blog
Jun 2025

Noma Security

Strategic investment

Investors: Silicon Valley CISO Investments

GlobeNewswire
Apr 2025

Pillar Security

Seed

$9M • Investors: Shield Capital, Golden Ventures, Ground Up Ventures, strategic angels

Pillar Security blog
Mar 2025
Oct 2024

Noma Security

Series A

$25M • Investors: Ballistic Ventures, Glilot Capital Partners, strategic investors

Noma Security blog
Sep 2024

Operant AI

Series A

$10M • Investors: SineWave Ventures, Felicis, Alumni Ventures, Massive, Calm Ventures, Gaingels, industry-expert angels

GlobeNewswire
Aug 2024

Gray Swan

Seed

$5.5M • Investors: friends and family, nontraditional investor, organizations focused on AI safety and security

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Jul 2024

Giskard

grant

EUR 3M • Investors: Bpifrance / France 2030

Giskard
May 2024
Feb 2024
Jan 2024
Nov 2023
Sep 2023

HiddenLayer

Series A

$50M • Investors: M12, Moore Strategic Ventures, Booz Allen Ventures, IBM Ventures, Capital One Ventures, Ten Eleven Ventures

PR Newswire
Aug 2023

Giskard

grant

EUR 2.5M • Investors: European Commission / EIC Accelerator

CORDIS
Jul 2023

Giskard

grant

EUR 500K • Investors: Bpifrance / France 2030

Giskard
Dec 2022

Giskard

Seed

EUR 1.5M • Investors: Elaia, Bessemer Venture Partners, Julien Chaumond, Oscar Salazar, Christine Balagué, Nathalie Gaveau, Charles Gorintin, Nick Hernandez, Vincent Huguet, Shéhérazade Semsar de Boisséson, Chris Schagen, Victor Coisne

Giskard closes its first financing round
Jul 2022

HiddenLayer

Seed

$6M • Investors: Ten Eleven Ventures

PR Newswire

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