Business

NewCore Raises $66M to Manage AI Agents as Workforce Members

NewCore, a cybersecurity startup, secured $66 million in funding to address the challenge of managing AI agents as digital employees, with a valuation of $300 million post-investment.

A woman interacts with robotic hands through a mesh displaying a neon cyberpunk atmosphere.

Photo: Yaroslav Shuraev / Pexels

NewCore, a cybersecurity startup, emerged from stealth with $66 million in funding on Monday, aiming to solve the challenge of authenticating, governing, and controlling AI agents at scale. The seed round was led by Cyberstarts, a cybersecurity-focused venture firm, with participation from Index Ventures and Evolution Equity Partners, valuing the company at $300 million after investment. Companies are increasingly treating AI agents as workplace participants rather than software tools. Goldman Sachs tested AI coding agent Devin as a new employee last year, while McKinsey reported that 25,000 AI agents work alongside its 60,000 employees this year. NewCore is positioning itself to help companies manage these digital workers as they become part of the workforce.

NewCore’s platform is designed to manage both human and AI-agent identities in a single system. The startup argues AI agents should be treated as first-class identities with their own permissions, lifecycle controls, and revocation mechanisms, rather than as traditional service accounts or machine credentials. The idea for NewCore began taking shape in 2023 when co-founder Zohar Alon reviewed a company’s technology budget and saw the size of the identity provider bill. He assumed the customer was satisfied with the product, but the customer disagreed, reinforcing Alon’s belief that identity systems had become a stagnant market dominated by vendors with limited competitive pressure.

Established identity providers such as Okta and Microsoft’s Entra have started adding capabilities for AI agents. However, Alon argues those efforts extend platforms originally designed for human employees, whereas NewCore was built from the ground up for a workforce made up of humans, machines, and AI agents. The startup uses a 'split-key' architecture to divide critical identity credentials between the customer and the platform, eliminating a single point of compromise. NewCore also offers an 'Agentic Skill' integration package for coding assistants like Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex and Cursor, allowing those tools to access enterprise systems as managed identities. Employees can use NewCore’s mobile app to grant, review, and revoke access for AI agents, providing a human oversight layer as companies deploy more autonomous systems.

Source: techcrunch

Key points

NewCore raised $66 million in funding led by Cyberstarts, with participation from Index Ventures and Evolution Equity Partners.
NewCore is positioning itself to help companies manage AI agents as part of their workforce.
Goldman Sachs tested AI coding agent Devin as a new employee last year.
McKinsey reported that 25,000 AI agents work alongside its 60,000 employees this year.
NewCore’s platform is designed to manage both human and AI-agent identities in a single system.
NewCore uses a 'split-key' architecture to divide critical identity credentials between the customer and the platform.
NewCore offers an 'Agentic Skill' integration package for coding assistants such as Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex and Cursor.

Source: TechCrunch Read the original →

WRITTEN BY

Marcus Feld

AI Business & Markets

Marcus reports on AI funding, acquisitions, partnerships, and the business behind the technology.