NewCore Just Raised $66M to Solve the AI Agent Identity Crisis

As enterprises race to deploy AI agents that can access emails, code repos, and customer databases, most are ignoring a critical security gap: those agents don't have proper identities. Traditional identity and access management tools were built for humans logging in with passwords and multi-factor authentication—not for autonomous software that can act on its own, scale infinitely, and create supply-chain risks that no one is auditing. NewCore, a cybersecurity startup that emerged from stealth on June 15, 2026, with $66 million in seed funding, is betting that every AI agent needs a first-class identity and that the existing identity stack is fundamentally inadequate for the agentic era .

The company's platform is a security-first identity layer rebuilt from the ground up to handle what it calls the "workforce that actually exists today: humans, machines, and AI agents" . Instead of bolting agent support onto legacy directories, NewCore continuously discovers every identity across an organization—including shadow accounts no one tracks—and enforces least-privilege access policies across all of them from one console . CEO Zohar Alon has stated the ambition directly: "We want to go head-to-head with Microsoft and Okta" .

What problem does it actually solve?

The core problem is simple but growing fast. When a company provisions an AI agent to read Slack messages, query a customer database, or push code changes, that agent typically inherits a human's credentials or runs with overly broad service-account permissions. Traditional identity systems cannot natively authenticate, authorize, or audit these non-human actors at scale, leaving security teams blind to what agents are doing and what data they can reach . This creates what NewCore calls a "prominent supply-chain risk across the modern enterprise identity stack" .

NewCore treats AI agents as first-class identities from the start. Every agent is provisioned with minimum access before it operates, and the platform provides full lifecycle management—issue, govern, contain, and revoke—mirroring how organizations already manage human employee access . The architecture is designed to sit on top of existing IT systems without requiring a rip-and-replace of directories or single sign-on infrastructure .

The $66 million seed round and $300 million valuation

The funding round was substantial for a seed-stage cybersecurity company, reflecting both the ambition of the problem and the track record of the founding team. Here are the key numbers:

• Total raised: $66 million in seed funding .
• Post-money valuation: $300 million .
• Lead investor: Cyberstarts, a cybersecurity-focused venture firm .
• Participating investors: Index Ventures and Evolution Equity Partners .
• Notable angels: Assaf Rappaport (co-founder and CEO of Wiz) and Evgeny Dibrov (co-founder and CEO of Armis) participated alongside other prominent cybersecurity founders .

Some reports describe the capital as a combined pre-seed and seed raise totaling $66 million, while others treat it as a single seed round. A Calcalistech report noted a $16 million pre-seed component led by Index Ventures and Cyberstarts, followed by an expanded seed round that brought the total to $66 million . Either way, the round places NewCore among the better-capitalized identity-security startups to launch in 2026.

Who founded the company

NewCore was founded in 2025 by three co-founders with deep credentials across cybersecurity, enterprise IT, and AI :

• Zohar Alon, CEO — Previously co-founded Dome9 Security, a cloud firewall and compliance platform acquired by Check Point Software . Alon's Dome9 experience gave him firsthand understanding of how enterprises manage access controls at cloud scale.
• Amihai Neiderman, CTO — Former Unit 8200 research leader and founder of Nym Health, a healthcare AI startup focused on autonomous medical coding . Neiderman brings both intelligence-unit security rigor and AI-system design experience.
• Erez Yarkoni, CCO — Former CIO of T-Mobile and Telstra, two of the world's largest telecommunications companies . Yarkoni's operator perspective shapes the platform's enterprise deployment model.

The company already has more than 50 employees across offices in Tel Aviv, Israel, and San Francisco .

Where the platform will be demonstrated

NewCore timed its stealth exit to coincide with the industry's biggest identity conference. The company announced the platform is available to enterprise customers immediately and will publicly demonstrate it at Identiverse in Las Vegas, running from June 15 to 18, 2026 . Identiverse is the premier conference for identity and access management practitioners, making it the natural venue for a company aiming to reset how the industry thinks about workforce identity in the agentic era.

Competitive context: Okta and Microsoft are already moving

NewCore is not entering an empty field. Microsoft launched Agent 365 at RSAC 2026 in March, a control plane that gives IT and security teams visibility into agent activity and integrates with Defender, Entra, and Purview . Okta shipped Okta for AI Agents to general availability on April 30, 2026, offering native agent identity primitives including discovery, registration, governance, and response capabilities . Both incumbents have massive installed bases and integration catalogs that NewCore will have to compete against.

NewCore's counterargument is architectural: the incumbents are extending platforms built fifteen years ago for human identity, while NewCore claims to have rebuilt identity from first principles for a world where non-human actors outnumber human employees. As one investor quoted on the company's about page put it, "NewCore isn't iterating on a fifteen-year-old architecture—they're replacing it" . Whether that architectural bet translates into enterprise adoption remains to be seen, but the $66 million seed round and $300 million valuation suggest at least some of the smartest money in cybersecurity believes the agent identity crisis is real and urgent.