A nascent software supply chain is emerging around the tools used AIR, an AI security startup, believes this gap in oversight will soon become a major concern.

The startup has raised $50 million across two seed rounds, with Sequoia leading the first round and Greenoaks leading the second, to build its product that monitors the supply chain of AI tools and skills. AIR's marketplace also offers vetted add-ons and skills for AI agents.

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"the way agents used wholesale

"The way AI agents are used wholesale at companies is beginning to resemble operating systems," says AIR CEO Bogomil Saban. "But the tools they use, or the software they can install, aren't yet being given the kind of oversight we give to drivers or applications."

Saban argues that as AI agents become more autonomous, attackers can poison the content an agent consumes instead of attacking it directly. AIR's solution involves a visibility product that finds active agents across a company's environment and identifies unapproved tool usage.

"In the early 2000s, whenever you installed a driver, the driver didn't need to be signed," Saban says. "Today, every time you install a driver, you see a signature saying who signed it." AIR claims its platform currently filters out about 27% of the add-ons and skills it finds online.

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The startup has seen strong demand from heavily regulated industries, particularly financial services and pharmaceutical companies. However, AIR is not alone in this space, with other startups like Noma Security, Zenity, Astrix Security, and Operant AI offering similar solutions.

"Continuously vetting skills and plugin websites is a hard mission to do," Saban says. "Gaining visibility over the endpoint is easy, but creating a moat around that is difficult." AIR plans to use its new funding to hire researchers and expand its go-to-market efforts in the US and Europe.