AIR, an AI security startup founded by Israeli intelligence veterans Yair Saban and Niv Hoffman, has emerged from stealth with $50 million in total funding across two seed rounds. Sequoia led a $10 million initial seed round, while Greenoaks led a subsequent $40 million round, with participation from cybersecurity founders and angel investors.
The startup provides an enterprise platform designed to monitor the emerging software supply chain surrounding AI agents. AIR discovers internal agents, tracks unapproved AI usage, and continuously inspects the third-party skills, plugins, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers agents access to interact with enterprise databases and the open internet.
AIR employs an enforcement layer that intercepts agent actions and screens tools against a dynamic whitelist to prevent data poisoning and malicious exploitation. According to the company, it currently filters out roughly 27% of public agent add-ons due to security risks and serves over 20 enterprise clients across heavily regulated sectors like finance and pharmaceuticals.
Why it matters
Creates a new security category focused on runtime governance and supply chain validation for autonomous agent integrations.
Demonstrates massive early investor demand for enterprise AI guardrails, driving a $50M seed valuation straight out of stealth.
Highlights severe security gaps in open agent protocols like MCP, where malicious code or poisoned data can corrupt corporate workflows.
Source: techcrunch.com
