Baselayer Secures $35M to Evaluate Enterprise AI Trustworthiness

Baselayer, an AI-driven startup specializing in business verification and fraud risk assessment for financial institutions, has secured $35 million to extend its identity verification technology to AI agents.

The San Francisco-based company’s Series A funding round was led by M13, with additional backing from Picus Capital, Torch Capital, Afore Capital, and Matt Thompson of Socure. According to co-founder and CEO Jonathan Awad, this latest financing brings Baselayer’s total capital raised to approximately $40 million since its inception in 2023. The startup chose not to disclose its valuation.

Baselayer integrates business identity, credit, and fraud data to assist banks, fintech firms, and other financial-services providers in evaluating potential customers. It distributes its products both directly and via software companies that resell or rebrand the technology. The automated platform originally concentrated on Know Your Business (KYB) identity verification, risk management, and fraud detection.

Awad reports that over 2,000 financial institutions—accounting for more than 20% of such entities in the U.S.—utilize the technology to onboard, underwrite, and open merchant accounts. Baselayer also collaborates with Fortune 500 companies, maintaining a workforce of roughly 50 employees distributed across offices in New York and San Francisco. Since launching, the startup states it has helped clients prevent over $1 billion in fraud losses.

While declining to share specific revenue numbers, Awad noted that Baselayer surpassed eight figures in revenue in under two years.

The startup is now directing the fresh capital toward a newer, expanding identity challenge: verifying whether an AI agent possesses proper authorization to act on behalf of a specific individual or enterprise.

As consumers increasingly deploy AI agents for tasks like making restaurant reservations, it becomes harder to distinguish whether an agent’s automated actions are legitimate or merely bots engaging in data scraping or fraud.

Concurrent with the funding announcement, Baselayer is launching its Agentic Identity Suite, expanding its identity network from corporate entities to the AI agents conducting transactions for them.

From businesses to the agents acting for them

In February 2023, Awad and co-founder Timothy Hyde launched Baselayer to tackle the historically fragmented and lengthy procedures financial institutions rely on for business verification and risk assessment.

“What we set out to do was essentially bring risk assessment to the 21st century,” Awad recalls.

Baselayer functions as both an identity network and a fraud consortium, according to Awad. Because thousands of financial institutions use its platform, the company can detect when a single person or business submits applications across multiple institutions, factoring that cross-platform activity into its risk scoring.

Processing tens of millions of applications annually, Baselayer frequently encounters the same businesses multiple times a year. Awad notes that this data pool grows increasingly valuable as additional institutions and reseller partners integrate into the network.

“We’ve essentially streamlined 10 years’ worth of selling into two years,” he said.

AI agents, however, introduce a distinct complication. Because they can be generated for a single task and disposed of immediately, they often leave behind little to no operational history for a risk provider or bank to review.

“Agents spin up and they spin down,” Awad said. “How can you trust this random one-task agent?”

To tackle this problem, Baselayer is building “Know Your Agent” (KYA). The system aims to identify who deployed an agent, which entity the agent represents, and whether it holds authorization to execute a designated task.

The approach involves issuing authorized agents a credential to present during purchases or interactions with other businesses. Online platforms, merchants, or financial institutions can then utilize this credential to determine whether to approve a transaction, Awad explained.

To issue and recognize these credentials, the startup is collaborating with agent developers, payment processors, fraud-detection providers, and merchants, including Prove, FIS, and Socure. Unless agents can prove they represent legitimate individuals or businesses, “agents will just get blocked everywhere,” Awad warned.

AI can also make fraud easier to scale

Ironically, the underlying technology that empowers legitimate agents to streamline tasks also enables fraudsters to execute operations at a much faster pace.

Historically, identity fraud required obtaining stolen personal and business data, constructing a convincing identity, and repeatedly submitting bank or credit card applications until an institution granted approval. This process previously demanded significant manual effort and time. Today, however, AI agents can automate and run parts of this pipeline continuously.

“It’s fraud on steroids right now,” Awad said. “It’s so easy, it’s so cheap, it’s so fast, and it’s 24/7.”

Recent reports of AI agents bypassing safety controls have further intensified questions regarding the oversight and identification of autonomous software. OpenAI, for instance, documented instances where its models executed unauthorized or deceptive maneuvers, such as activities linked to the Hugging Face platform.

Awad conceded that Baselayer’s technology cannot prevent a model from ignoring instructions or exploiting security flaws. Instead, its objective is to authenticate an agent’s credentials when it initiates interactions or transactions with external parties.

Without a reliable method to identify themselves, legitimate agents might resort to circumventing website restrictions merely to finish assigned duties—or risk losing utility entirely as they are repeatedly blocked as suspected bots.

Competing to establish a standard

M13 managing partner Karl Alomar stated in an interview with Crunchbase News that he met Awad roughly a year prior to making an investment, initially viewing the startup strictly as a KYB technology vendor.

“The business did not feel like a business of the future,” he admits. “It just felt like he was solving a KYB banking verification problem.”

That perspective shifted as corporations began experimenting with AI agent payments and Baselayer integrated its corporate identity data into the sector.

“Every agent ultimately is going to have to be tied to something real, and they understand the real world,” Alomar said.

He believes that Baselayer’s pre-existing data assets, identity network, and financial institution relationships provide a competitive edge over startups entering the market from the ground up.

“AI agents are rapidly becoming economic actors, but the identity infrastructure underneath commerce was never designed for software that can open accounts, make purchases, move money or enter into transactions on someone else’s behalf,” Alomar added. “That creates an enormous new trust problem, and we believe identity will become one of the foundational infrastructure layers of the agentic economy.”

Although an industry-wide standard is not yet established, Baselayer must still convince payment platforms, financial institutions, merchants, and agent developers to accept its credential format.

That adoption process may require patience. Awad noted that building relationships with financial institutions typically spans 12 to 18 months, while large merchant partnerships can take up to 24 months, though existing reseller channels may help Baselayer connect with certain institutions more rapidly.

Beyond payments, the company envisions broader applications. Alomar suggested the technology could eventually validate agents operating within smart contracts or cryptocurrency transactions.

“This is not just a fintech business — it’s a security business,” he said. “It begins with payments, but ultimately that technology applies directly to anywhere that an agent is making a decision that you need to verify it is permitted to make.”

Related Crunchbase queries:

• Global Venture Funding To AI Startups In 2026
• Global Financial Services Venture Funding In 2026
• Global Cybersecurity Venture Funding In 2026

Illustration: Dom Guzman

?Frequently Asked Questions

01What is Baselayer?

Baselayer is an AI-powered startup that combines business identity, credit, and fraud data to help banks, fintechs, and other financial institutions verify businesses and manage fraud risk.

02How much funding has Baselayer raised?

Baselayer has raised a total of about $40 million since its inception in 2023, including a recent $35 million Series A round led by M13.

03What is Baselayer’s Agentic Identity Suite?

The Agentic Identity Suite is a new offering designed to verify whether an AI agent is authorized to act on behalf of a specific person or business, addressing the rising challenge of autonomous software security and verification.

04What is KYA (Know Your Agent)?

KYA is a developing system by Baselayer intended to determine who deployed an AI agent, who the agent represents, and whether it has permission to execute specific tasks or transactions.

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