Exclusive: Can You Trust That AI Agent? Baselayer Raises $35M To Help Companies Decide

figure — baselayer, an AI-powered startup that helps financial institutions verify businesses and assess fraud risk, has raised $35 million to expand its identity technology to AI agents. M13 led the San Francisco-based company’s Series A, with participation from Picus Capital, Torch Capital, Afore Capital and Matt Thompson of Socure.

The financing brings Baselayer’s total funding to about $40 million since its 2023 inception, according to co-founder and CEO Jonathan Awad. The company declined to disclose its valuation. Baselayer combines business identity, credit and fraud data to help banks, fintech companies and other financial-services providers evaluate prospective customers. It sells its products directly and through software companies that resell or put their own branding on Baselayer’s technology. Its automated platform initially focused on Know Your Business, or KYB, identity verification, fraud detection and risk management. Timothy Hyde and Jonathan Awad, co-founders of Baselayer. (Courtesy photo) More than 2,000 financial institutions — representing over 20% of such institutions in the U.S. — use its technology to onboard, underwrite and open accounts for merchants, according to Awad. Baselayer also works with Fortune 500 companies and has about 50 employees across offices in San Francisco and New York. Since its founding, the startup claims it has helped customers prevent more than $1 billion in fraud losses. Awad declined to reveal hard revenue figures, saying only that Baselayer reached eight figures in revenue in less than two years. Now, Baselayer is using its new capital to address a newer — and growing — identity problem: determining whether an AI agent is actually authorized to act on behalf of a particular person or business. With people using AI agents left and right these days to book a restaurant reservation, for example, it’s becoming increasingly challenging to determine whether an AI agent’s automated activity is legitimate or if it’s a bot attempting to scrape data or commit fraud. Alongside its raise, Baselayer today is also announcing the launch of its Agentic Identity Suite, extending its identity network from businesses to the AI agents transacting on their behalf. From businesses to the agents acting for them Awad and co-founder Timothy Hyde started Baselayer in February 2023, initially focusing on the lengthy and fragmented process financial institutions use to verify businesses and assess risk.