As AI agents become employees, NewCore emerges with $66M to give them identities

Cybersecurity startup NewCore has officially launched with an impressive $66 million in funding, aiming to tackle a pressing challenge faced by businesses as they increasingly integrate AI agents into their operations. The seed funding round was led by Cyberstarts, a venture capital firm specializing in cybersecurity, alongside contributions from Index Ventures and Evolution Equity Partners, culminating in a valuation of $300 million for NewCore. As organizations begin to treat AI agents as integral team members rather than mere software tools, NewCore's mission becomes increasingly relevant. For instance, Goldman Sachs has experimented with AI coding agent Devin as a new employee, and McKinsey recently reported that around 25,000 AI agents are already collaborating with its workforce of 60,000. Co-founder and CEO Zohar Alon recognizes that managing these digital workers will soon mirror the complexities of human employee management. He emphasizes that existing identity systems are at risk of becoming the weakest links in enterprise security. Alon, who previously founded cloud-security company Dome9 before its acquisition by Check Point, asserts that the proliferation of AI agents necessitates a complete reevaluation of identity management platforms. "We know for sure that the scale and complexity of AI agents will overwhelm legacy identity platforms that have been in place for 15 to 20 years," Alon stated in an interview with TechCrunch. NewCore's leadership team also includes CTO Amihai Neiderman, a former Unit 8200 research leader and founder of healthcare AI startup Nym Health, alongside Chief Commercial Officer Erez Yarkoni, who has held CIO roles at T-Mobile USA and Telstra. The innovative platform developed by NewCore is designed to manage both human and AI-agent identities within a unified system. The startup advocates for treating AI agents as first-class identities, complete with their own permissions, lifecycle controls, and revocation mechanisms, in contrast to traditional service accounts. The inception of NewCore was inspired by Alon's experience in 2023, where he discovered the limitations of established identity providers while reviewing a company's technology budget. Despite the high costs, customer satisfaction was lacking, highlighting a stagnation in the identity market dominated by a few key players. While traditional providers like Okta and Microsoft's Entra are beginning to adapt their platforms for AI agents, Alon argues that these modifications merely extend tools meant for human employees. NewCore, however, was built from the ground up to cater to a diverse workforce comprising humans, machines, and AI agents. One of NewCore's standout features is its unique "split-key" architecture, which enhances security by dividing critical identity credentials between the customer and the platform, thus eliminating single points of failure. Additionally, NewCore offers an "Agentic Skill" integration package for AI tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex, enabling these agents to operate as managed identities within enterprise systems. Employees can also utilize NewCore's mobile application to manage access for AI agents, allowing for a necessary layer of human oversight as organizations increasingly deploy autonomous systems. Currently, NewCore has grown to over 50 employees across the U.S. and Israel, servicing a small group of customers and design partners, with plans to start charging clients this summer. Looking ahead, Alon predicts that AI agents may soon outnumber human employees in many tech-focused organizations. This sentiment aligns with the views of TCS Chairman N. Chandrasekaran, who has noted that AI agents could rival the workforce size of major IT services companies in the future. Alon emphasizes the urgency of developing robust identity management systems to cope with the demands of a future where AI agents play a significant role within the workforce, stating, "It's inevitable that AI agents will become a major component of the workforce. The real question is whether we can establish the necessary safeguards in time."