mcp-security
(6)
The Most Dangerous Second in AI
Operant AI is betting that the decisive moment in cybersecurity is no longer before software ships or after an alarm rings. It is the instant an AI agent decides to act.
Salt Security Bet the Next Big Breach Would Walk Through an API. Now AI Agents Have the Keys.
Salt built a unicorn by watching the doors modern software forgot it had. Its next act is policing the AI agents now opening those doors at machine speed - and turning eight years of API behavior into a map security teams can use.
Runlayer Wants Your AI Agents Working - Just Not Running Wild
Employees were connecting AI to company systems faster than security teams could count the connections. Runlayer turned that mess into a control plane - and persuaded Gusto, Jane, Homebase and other large companies to let the agents in.
Aembit Wants to Give Every AI Agent a Badge - Without Giving It the Keys
Companies taught employees to prove who they are. Aembit is betting the next security market belongs to doing the same for software - issuing short-lived access to workloads and AI agents only when policy says yes.
Straiker
Straiker is a Sunnyvale-based agentic AI security company that helps enterprises deploy AI agents without handing attackers the keys. Its platform spans three jobs - Discover AI maps the agents, MCP servers, and workflows running across a company; Ascend AI red-teams them before deployment to surface prompt injection, goal hijacking, and tool misuse; and Defend AI blocks identity abuse, memory poisoning, and data exfiltration at runtime. Founded by former Palo Alto Networks and Akamai security leaders, Straiker raised a $64M Series A in June 2026, bringing total funding to $85M.
Virtue AI
Virtue AI is a San Francisco-based enterprise AI security company that helps organizations deploy generative AI and AI agents safely. Founded in 2024 by AI-safety researchers from Berkeley, Stanford, and Chicago, its platform combines automated red-teaming (VirtueRed), real-time multimodal guardrails (VirtueGuard), and an end-to-end agent security suite (AgentSuite) to catch prompt injections, jailbreaks, data poisoning, and policy violations before they reach production. The company raised $30 million in seed and Series A funding and counts frontier AI labs and enterprises in finance, healthcare, and IT among its customers.