AI Agents Are Now Employees That Need a Digital ID
A startup just raised $66M to give AI agents official corporate identities. As AI workers begin to outnumber humans, here's why this security layer is critical.
Key Takeaways
- AI agents are increasingly being treated as digital employees, creating new and complex security risks for companies.
- NewCore raised $66 million to build a unified identity platform that manages both human and AI workers as 'first-class' identities.
- The trend signals a fundamental shift from viewing AI as a simple tool to seeing it as an autonomous workforce participant that needs to be managed and secured.
A cybersecurity startup named NewCore has emerged with $66 million in funding to solve a problem most companies are just beginning to face. The company is betting that as AI agents become autonomous corporate employees, they will need official digital identities to work securely.
The funding round values NewCore at $300 million. According to reports from TechCrunch and The Next Web, the investment was led by Cyberstarts, Index Ventures, and Evolution Equity Partners.
This isn't a future problem. Companies are already deploying AI agents that act on their own to query databases, file support tickets, and even move money. A TechCrunch report notes that McKinsey has 25,000 AI agents working alongside its 60,000 employees, while Goldman Sachs has tested coding agents as new hires.
Currently, these digital workers often operate using borrowed human credentials or untracked access keys. This practice creates a significant and unaudited security risk inside corporate networks.
NewCore aims to be the system of record for this new workforce. Its platform is designed to issue, manage, and track identities for both human staff and AI agents under a single architecture.
The goal is to treat AI agents as first-class identities with their own permissions and audit trails, not as simple software tools. NewCore co-founder and CEO Zohar Alon told TechCrunch that the scale and complexity of AI agents will break 15-year-old identity platforms.
The startup is going head-to-head with incumbents like Microsoft and Okta. While these established players are adding features for AI agents, NewCore argues they are bolting on capabilities to systems designed for humans. Alon claims NewCore was built from the ground up for a hybrid human-AI workforce.
To integrate with existing AI tools, the company offers an "Agentic Skill" package. This allows coding assistants like Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex to access corporate systems using a managed identity instead of shared credentials.
The platform also includes a layer of human supervision. According to TechCrunch, employees can use a mobile app to grant, review, and revoke access for AI agents. This oversight is crucial as AI agents begin to handle sensitive tasks, like the autonomous checkouts OpenAI is enabling.
NewCore is already live with fewer than 10 customers and more than 10 design partners. The company plans to begin charging for its service this summer.
The $300 million valuation is a significant bet on this vision of the future. Alon predicts that AI agents could outnumber human employees at many tech-focused companies within just a few years.
The core question NewCore is selling to investors and customers is not whether AI agents will become a major part of the workforce, but whether companies can build the necessary security guardrails in time.
References:
- The Next Web, NewCore raises $66m to give AI agents a corporate identity. Accessed on Jun 15, 2026
- TechCrunch, As AI agents become employees, NewCore emerges with $66M to give them identities. Accessed on Jun 15, 2026
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