AIR Raises $50 Million to Secure AI Agent Tools

As companies expand the permissions they grant AI agents within their systems, an entirely new software supply chain is taking shape around the tools these agents rely on: skills, extensions, MCP protocol servers, and components that enable them to interact with the internet and internal systems. Amid this shift, cybersecurity startup "AIR" is emerging from stealth mode, announcing that it has raised $50 million to build a platform that monitors and secures this nascent chain.

Who Are the Company's Founders?

The company was founded by Yair Saban (CEO) and Niv Hofman (CTO), both veterans of Israel's Unit 8200 intelligence corps, where they worked in offensive cybersecurity. Their platform offers three capabilities: discovering the agents operating within companies, continuously verifying the skills, tools, and components they use, and preventing them from interacting with any software or external sources that fail to meet security standards. The company also provides an online marketplace for pre-verified extensions and skills.

Details of the Two Funding Rounds

The two investment rounds closed within weeks of each other. The first raised $10 million, led by Sequoia, while the second raised $40 million, led by Greenoaks. A number of influential investors participated in the funding, including former founders of companies such as Wiz, Eon, and Clay, as well as other angel investors.

Why Does This Represent a Security Problem?

Saban believes that the way agents are used within organizations has become similar to operating systems, yet the tools they use are not subject to the same oversight we apply to drivers or applications. He draws a useful comparison, noting that drivers at the turn of the millennium did not require a digital signature, whereas today every driver carries a signature identifying its source because it loads code into the system kernel — something not yet available for skills, extensions, and MCP servers despite the identical mechanism.

The greater danger, according to Saban, is that when agents operate with increasing autonomy across databases and enterprise systems and connect to the internet, attackers can poison the content the agent consumes instead of attacking it directly.

How Does the AIR Platform Work?

The platform relies on three integrated layers:

• Visibility and Discovery: Identifying active agents in a company's environment, and detecting employees using AI tools not approved by IT departments or relying on personal accounts.
• Enforcement and Control: A layer that connects to agents to intercept and analyze their actions, such as loading a new skill or fetching content from the internet.
• Whitelisting: Comparing requested tools and extensions against a trusted list that the company continuously updates.

AIR explains that it evaluates publicly available skills and extensions for any changes or malicious behavior, since a previously approved skill can become a risk if a package it depends on changes or its developer's account is compromised. The company says it currently excludes around 27% of the extensions and skills it monitors online.

Customers and Competition

AIR states it has more than 20 customers, roughly a quarter of them large enterprises, with strong demand in heavily regulated sectors such as financial services and pharmaceutical companies. However, the company is not alone in this space, competing with names such as Noma Security, Zenity, Astrix Security, and Operant AI, amid a heavy influx of venture capital into this category.

Saban believes his company's competitive advantage lies in the ability to continuously verify the ecosystem of skills and extensions — a difficult task compared to endpoint visibility, which anyone can achieve. He adds that even if AI labs integrate security controls in the future, companies will still want to purchase an independent product that works across various providers.

The company currently employs around 40 people, and the new capital will primarily go toward hiring researchers and expanding its commercial operations in the United States and Europe.

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