As AI agents become employees, NewCore emerges with $66M to give them identities

2026-06-15 · Source: AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch · Field: Technology & Digital — Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Cybersecurity & Data Privacy, Robotics & Autonomous Systems · Depth: Intermediate, short

Summary

Cybersecurity startup NewCore emerged from stealth with \$66 million in funding, valuing the company at \$300 million, to address the growing challenge of authenticating, governing, and controlling AI agents at scale. The company believes existing identity platforms, designed for human employees, are ill-suited for a future workforce where AI agents operate alongside humans. For instance, McKinsey already employs 25,000 AI agents alongside 60,000 human employees. NewCore's platform manages both human and AI-agent identities as first-class entities, offering features like a "split-key" architecture to prevent single points of compromise and "Agentic Skill" integration for coding assistants such as Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. It also provides a mobile app for human oversight to grant, review, and revoke AI agent access. NewCore has grown to over 50 employees and expects to begin charging its fewer than 10 customers and more than 10 design partners this summer.

Key takeaway

For AI Architects or Directors of AI/ML planning large-scale AI agent deployments, your existing identity management systems are likely insufficient. These platforms, designed for human employees, will struggle to authenticate, govern, and control AI agents as first-class digital workers. You should evaluate purpose-built identity solutions like NewCore that offer features such as split-key architecture and human oversight mechanisms to secure and manage your expanding AI workforce effectively. Proactively addressing this prevents critical security vulnerabilities.

Key insights

Existing enterprise identity platforms are inadequate for managing AI agents as first-class digital employees, necessitating purpose-built solutions.

Principles

• AI agents require first-class identity management.
• Identity systems are a weak link in enterprise security.
• Human oversight is crucial for autonomous AI agents.

Method

NewCore's approach involves treating AI agents as first-class identities with their own permissions and lifecycle controls. It uses a "split-key" architecture and "Agentic Skill" integration for coding assistants, enabling human oversight via a mobile app for access management.

In practice

• Integrate coding assistants like Claude Code as managed identities.
• Use mobile apps to grant/revoke AI agent access.
• Implement split-key architecture for identity credentials.

Topics

• AI Agent Identity
• Enterprise Identity Management
• Cybersecurity Startups
• Access Control
• AI Workforce Management
• Split-Key Architecture

Best for: CTO, Investor, VP of Engineering/Data, AI Security Engineer, AI Architect, Director of AI/ML

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch.