Neo comes out of stealth mode with $100 million from a16z and Bessemer to develop a control layer for agentic AI software.

      Neo emerged from stealth mode on Monday, securing $100 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners, with additional participation from Craft Ventures and Merlin Ventures. Founded by former executives from SentinelOne, Wiz, and Palo Alto Networks, the company is developing a real-time control layer for agentic software within enterprises. The challenge it aims to tackle is the rapid integration of AI agents into browsers, developer tools, SaaS platforms, and legacy applications, outpacing the security teams’ ability to monitor them.

      According to Gartner, only 5% of enterprise applications were agentic in 2025, but this figure is projected to rise to 40% by the end of 2026. This transformation implies that software capable of reasoning, acting, invoking tools, chaining workflows, and inheriting user permissions is increasingly present in environments where security systems were designed for predictable software and human users. Neo provides SecOps teams with a comprehensive inventory of all AI agents and agentic-enabled applications within the organization, assessing their capabilities and risks, linking actions back to the corresponding user or agent, and enforcing policies proactively to prevent risky activities.

      “Enterprise security was designed for a time when software functioned predictably. That landscape is changing rapidly,” stated CEO Nick Warner, who previously led SentinelOne’s marketing strategy and took the company public in 2021. Earlier this year, Straiker raised $64 million for a similar venture in agentic security, indicating a rapidly emerging category as major enterprise software vendors incorporate autonomous features into previously authorized products. The security challenge is not misused AI tools, but rather sanctioned software that has quietly acquired the ability to operate independently.

      Neo’s platform encompasses AI agents, AI-enabled applications, browser extensions, MCP servers, plugins, and traditional software that is adopting agentic capabilities. It enforces control measures directly, blocking risky tool calls, API access, and data transfer without requiring another product for enforcement. NewCore recently raised $66 million to provide corporate identities for AI agents, addressing the authentication aspect of the same issue. Neo believes that the controlling layer represents the bigger market opportunity: focusing not on the identity of the agent, but rather on what actions it is permitted to perform. With $100 million in seed funding, Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer are wagering that the first company to establish this layer will dominate the category.