Baselayer, a startup that already helps more than 2,000 financial institutions verify business identities, has raised $35 million to solve a rapidly emerging problem: determining whether an AI agent is authorized to act on behalf of a company.

What You Need to Know

Baselayer already provides Know Your Business, or KYB, verification and fraud detection to thousands of banks and fintechs. Its new Agentic Identity Suite extends that network to cover AI agents. The Series A round was led by M13, with participation from Socure co-founder Matt Thompson. The company says it has helped prevent over $1 billion in fraud losses since its 2023 founding.

The Funding Round

San Francisco-based Baselayer raised the Series A from M13 with additional backing from Picus Capital, Torch Capital, Afore Capital and Matt Thompson of Socure. The round brings Baselayer's total funding to approximately $40 million. Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Awad said the company reached eight figures in revenue in under two years. Baselayer has about 50 employees across offices in San Francisco and New York.

The Challenge of AI Agent Identity

AI agents are increasingly used to book reservations, process payments and interact with business systems. But these agents create a new identity problem. Unlike a human or a permanent business entity, an AI agent may be created for a single task and disappear. It leaves little or no historical data for a bank or risk provider to evaluate. Baselayer is developing what it calls Know Your Agent, or KYA, to address this problem. The system aims to determine not only who deployed an agent but also what entity it represents and whether it has permission to perform a specific action.

  • Credential issuance: An authorized agent receives a digital credential it can present when transacting.
  • Verification on request: A merchant or financial institution checks the credential to decide whether to allow the transaction.
  • Network intelligence: Baselayer's system cross-references activity across thousands of institutions to detect suspicious patterns.

Why This Matters

As financial institutions accelerate their adoption of AI agents, the risk of automated fraud and unauthorized transactions grows. Baselayer's network effect becomes more valuable as more institutions connect to it. If an agent has no history, the platform's ability to cross-reference its origin and permission status could become a critical checkpoint. The company's expansion from business identity to agent identity positions it at the center of a new security layer for the financial system. Regulators and compliance teams, meanwhile, face growing pressure to ensure agent-based transactions meet the same standards as human ones.

Building on a Fraud Prevention Network

Baselayer was founded in February 2023 by Jonathan Awad and Timothy Hyde. The company initially focused on streamlining the fragmented Know Your Business and risk assessment processes that financial institutions rely on. It provides business identity, credit and fraud data to evaluate prospective customers. More than 20 percent of U.S. financial institutions use its technology. Baselayer says it processes tens of millions of applications and sees repeat data from many businesses. That data becomes more useful as the network grows. The company sells its products both directly and through software partners that white-label the technology.