Neo Secures $100M for AI Control Layer

The integration of autonomous systems into corporate environments has introduced a new class of operational complexity. As software gains the capacity to make decisions and execute workflows independently, businesses face the challenge of maintaining visibility over these increasingly active, AI-driven components.

Building a Control Layer

Neo, an American-Israeli cybersecurity startup, announced its entry into the market this Monday with $100 million in total funding. The capital, secured through seed and Series A rounds, comes from Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Craft Ventures, and Merlin Ventures. The company intends to allocate these resources toward the expansion of its engineering and go-to-market teams.

The startup aims to provide a centralized control layer designed to govern AI agents, models, extensions, and MCP servers across an organization. By maintaining a continuous catalog of these active elements, the platform allows security operations teams to monitor the digital environment for potential configuration vulnerabilities or excessive access privileges.

Tracing Software Actions

A core feature of the Neo platform is its ability to provide real-time attribution. The system traces individual software actions back to their origin, whether that source is a human user, a specific application identity, or an automated agent. This visibility is designed to allow security teams to enforce granular policies regarding data movement, tool calls, and API access.

AI agents and agentic capabilities are being embedded into browsers, developer tools, SaaS platforms, and traditional applications, giving software the ability to reason, act, invoke tools, and move through workflows with valid user permissions. Neo gives enterprises the real-time control layer they need to understand what agentic software can do, govern how it behaves, and secure adoption without slowing down the business.

— Nick Warner, CEO at Neo

Leadership and Background

The company was established by a team with prior experience in the cybersecurity sector. CEO Nick Warner previously held executive positions at SentinelOne, Cylance, McAfee, and Forepoint. He is joined by CPO Shlomi Salem, who formerly led detection engineering at SentinelOne, and CTO Eran Shirazi, a co-founder of the customer experience firm EasySend.

• $100 million: Total funding raised across seed and Series A rounds.

Implications for Security Teams

The emergence of this platform suggests that as enterprises continue to adopt agentic workflows, the demand for specialized oversight tools may increase. For security leaders, the ability to pause suspicious operations or restrict unauthorized activity in real-time could become a critical requirement. If these tools successfully provide the granular control necessary to match the speed of AI deployment, it might shift the current approach to managing automated software risk from reactive monitoring to proactive policy enforcement.