As companies start treating AI agents like staff, the Israeli-American startup wants to be the system that logs them in, and it is taking aim at Microsoft and Okta.
NewCore has come out of stealth with $66m to solve a problem most companies have not named yet: who, or what, is logging into their systems. The identity-security startup, based in Tel Aviv and San Francisco, is building a platform to govern both human employees and autonomous AI agents under one architecture, and it is doing so at a $300m valuation.
The round is really two: a $16m pre-seed led by Index Ventures and Cyberstarts, then an expanded seed led by Evolution Equity Partners that brought the total to $66m, at a $300m valuation.
Chief executive Zohar Alon previously founded the cloud-security firm Dome9, later bought by Check Point; his co-founders are Amihai Neiderman, a former Unit 8200 research leader and founder of Nym Health, and Erez Yarkoni, a one-time CIO of T-Mobile US and Telstra. Israeli security founders including Wiz’s Assaf Rappaport and Cyera’s Yotam Segev joined as angels.
The pitch starts from a shift already under way. Enterprises are deploying AI agents that act on their own, querying databases, moving money, filing tickets, and each of those agents needs credentials, permissions and an audit trail, just like a person. Today that is a mess: agents borrow human logins or run on static keys nobody tracks.
NewCore wants to be the system of record for all of it, issuing identities to agents, setting what they can touch, and logging what they do, in the same place a company manages its staff. It is positioning the agent problem not as a bolt-on but as a reason to rebuild workforce identity from scratch, which is why it says it is going “head-to-head with Microsoft and Okta,” the incumbents that own that layer today.
It even ships an “Agentic Skill” that lets coding agents like Anthropic’s Claude Code, OpenAI’s Codex and Cursor log into corporate systems as managed identities rather than on borrowed credentials.
Why investors are paying up this early
It is early, but not vapour: NewCore is live, with fewer than 10 customers, more than 10 design partners, and plans to start charging this summer. So the $300m valuation is a bet on timing. The number of non-human identities inside companies is exploding, and security teams are realising that an AI agent with the wrong permissions is a breach waiting to happen.
That fear, more than any feature, is what NewCore is selling.
The hard part is that Microsoft and Okta are not standing still, and “identity for agents” is fast becoming a crowded category rather than open ground. NewCore’s edge, for now, is its backers and the founders betting on it.
The test is whether a security-first identity layer for agents becomes its own product, or a feature the incumbents absorb before a startup can own it.
Cristian Dina is the CRO at The Next Web. He has interviewed 300+ industry leaders and authored the book King of Networking, establishing hi (show all) Cristian Dina is the CRO at The Next Web. He has interviewed 300+ industry leaders and authored the book King of Networking, establishing himself as one of the most connected and respected voices in the ecosystem. At just 23 years old, Cristian was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 2025 list, representing a new generation of tech builders, bold thinkers who move fast, build with purpose, and create real impact.