From AI Apps to Agents: Investing in Manifold Security

AI agents are here. And for security teams, that means the attack surface has expanded dramatically.

Before agents, AI security was all about “guardrails”: put protections around the AI app, like ChatGPT, and secure the AI.

Agents operate differently. They’re dynamic and largely non-deterministic. They move across multiple systems interacting with tools, APIs, and external environments.

With agents, the attack surface for AI is no longer just the AI app or interface. It crosses every system the agent can access, every permission it inherits, and every action it’s allowed to execute. That means mistakes, prompt injections, or compromised agents can spread across systems and execute unintended actions.

I’ve met with a lot of agent security companies, and most teams are still trying to secure agents the way we secured chatbots. The Manifold Security team was different.

Manifold Co-Founders Neal, Oleks, and Mike came from Protect AI, one of the most notable first generation AI security companies, where they worked directly with customers deploying AI systems. They saw the limitations that came with the guardrail and gateway-based approaches and developed a clear view of what security would need to look like as AI systems evolved from single applications into autonomous agents.

And over the past few months, the team has worked at an incredible pace to build a detection and response platform to secure agents on endpoints.

Their platform is very impressive - well-architected, fast to get started, and gives security teams full runtime visibility into what agents are actually doing: the tools they call, the systems they access, and the actions they take. It maps every agent and its connections across MCP servers, databases, and external systems in real-time, flagging abnormal behavior.

I believe the market for agent-based software will dwarf traditional applications, creating an even bigger opportunity for the leading agentic security companies than cloud security did for companies like Wiz. Manifold is building to be that company.

I’m so proud to invest in their $8M seed round alongside good friends at Costanoa Ventures, Rain Capital, and Cherry Ventures.

Manifold is already operating at a pace that puts them among the fastest-building teams in cyber. I’m thrilled to be a part of their team!

Read more from Manifold’s CEO Neal Swaelens here