AI security startup AIR has emerged from stealth with $50 million raised across two seed rounds to build a platform monitoring the growing ecosystem of skills, plug-ins, and MCP servers that AI agents use to interact with company systems and the internet. The company was founded by Yair Saban, CEO, and Niv Hoffman, CTO, both veterans of Israel’s Unit 8200 intelligence corps.
The funding closed in two rounds within weeks of each other, a $10 million round led by Sequoia followed by a $40 million round led by Greenoaks, with participation from Cognition’s Zach Frankel, Wiz co-founder Yinon Costica, Eon co-founder Ofir Ehrlich, and other investors.
Saban said AI agents are increasingly resembling operating systems within companies, yet the tools and add-ons they use lack the kind of verification long applied to software like device drivers. AIR’s platform discovers active agents across a company’s environment, flags unapproved AI tool usage, and enforces security checks on agent actions in real time, screening tools against a continuously updated whitelist that currently filters out about 27% of add-ons it evaluates.
The company reports more than 20 customers, with strongest demand from regulated sectors like financial services and pharmaceuticals. It competes with similarly funded startups including Zenity, Noma Security, Astrix Security, and Operant AI. Sequoia partner Bogomil Balkansky described the challenge as a continuous infrastructure problem rather than a simple scanning task. AIR, which has around 40 employees, plans to use the funding to expand research and go-to-market efforts in the U.S. and Europe.
Featured image: Credit: AIR