Neo (neo.ai), a Boston-based American-Israeli startup, has raised $100M across seed and Series A rounds. The company provides a real-time control layer that gives SecOps teams inventory, intelligence, attribution, and policy enforcement over AI agents, agentic applications, browsers, and identities. The capital will scale engineering and go-to-market teams.
Agentic Adoption Outpaces Security Tools
The timing aligns with rapid embedding of agentic capabilities. Gartner data cited by the company shows only 5% of enterprise applications featured agentic features at the end of 2025, rising to over 40% by the end of 2026. Existing endpoint detection and response tools stop at the application boundary, leaving agent actions, tool calls, and data movements unmonitored.
Traditional EDR Misses Agent Runtime
Neo addresses the gap by tracking every action back to the originating human, agent, or identity. Its Neoverse knowledge base continuously maps 1.2M+ software artifacts for capabilities and risks. The platform delivers posture assessment, granular policy control, and native enforcement that can block actions in approximately 12 milliseconds without kernel modules or reboots.
As Nicholas Warner, CEO and former SentinelOne President, noted:
"AI agents and agentic capabilities are being embedded into browsers, developer tools, SaaS platforms, and traditional applications, giving software the ability to reason, act, invoke tools, and move through workflows with valid user permissions."
a16z and Bessemer Lead Category Bet
Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners led the rounds, joined by Craft Ventures and Merlin Ventures. Zane Lackey of a16z highlighted the team's prior success building category-defining security platforms. The backing signals strong conviction that a dedicated control layer is required as software behavior shifts from predictable to autonomous.
Founders Bring SentinelOne Pedigree
The company was founded by three SentinelOne veterans: Nicholas Warner (CEO), Shlomi Salem (CPO), and Eran Shirazi (CTO). Their combined experience in detection engineering and endpoint security informs Neo's approach of treating agentic behavior as a software governance problem rather than an AI safety issue.
Security Conferences Anchor Go-to-Market
Neo is positioning itself through direct engagement at events such as Black Hat USA 2026. The platform supports macOS and Windows endpoints, maintains SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance, and has demonstrated deployment across thousands of enterprise endpoints in early testing.