AIR Unveils $50M Funded Firewall for AI Agents

NEW YORK — On September 1, 2026, AIR, the company developing an inline firewall for AI agents, emerged from stealth mode and unveiled a $50 million funding round, led by Sequoia Capital and Greenoaks, with additional investments from Swish Ventures and Netz Capital. This move comes after a series of security research findings that highlighted significant vulnerabilities in AI add-on installations.

According to AIR, as enterprises increasingly deploy AI agents, these entities are integrating with a vast array of tools, data, and third-party services. The agents are performing complex tasks, including browsing websites, accessing files, and emails, and even taking actions on behalf of employees. As AI agents gain more autonomy and connect to a broader range of enterprise systems, the risk of external threats increases. Malicious content or compromised tools can influence an agent to perform unintended actions, potentially leading to data theft, fraud, or unauthorized access.

"Every enterprise has a firewall protecting its network, but now they need one protecting their AI agents," stated Yair Saban, co-founder and CEO of AIR. "AI agents need a new kind of firewall—one that protects what enters their context."

AIR's launch follows research that uncovered critical security risks. In one study, the company found that over 17,800 public AI add-ons—representing 6.7 million installations—relied on untrusted external instruction sources. Another study revealed AI Skills in the wild impersonating trusted brands, such as Anthropic and OpenAI, to bypass platform security reviews and execute arbitrary code.

Yair Saban and Niv Hoffman founded AIR, combining their expertise in offensive security, enterprise infrastructure, and AI security research. The team is bolstered by Ryan Knisley, former CISO at The Walt Disney Company and Costco Wholesale, who serves as Chief Strategy Officer.

AIR's platform continuously discovers and evaluates every skill, plugin, MCP server, and add-on across an organization's AI agent supply chain, both before and after deployment. If an add-on is deemed malicious, vulnerable, or unapproved, AIR enables security teams to trace every agent and workflow that depends on it and revoke it across the organization. Additionally, the company provides a marketplace of pre-vetted, certified add-ons, ensuring enterprises can safely expand agent capabilities without introducing unmanaged risk.

"From the beginning, what gave us conviction in AIR was the founders," said Bogomil Balkansky, a partner at Sequoia Capital. "They recognized early that AI agents would create a completely new security problem for enterprises and started building for it before most companies were even thinking about it. We believe they have the team and the vision to define this category."

Patrick Backhouse, a partner at Greenoaks, added, "Software supply chains were never the most critical attack surface within an enterprise. Now, with AI agents, they are vitally important. AIR is building the platform to discover every agent, govern what they are allowed to touch, and monitor them in production. We believe that this layer will become mandatory to enterprise cybersecurity, and we are proud to partner with Yair, Niv, and the Air team as they define it."

AIR's inline firewall is designed to protect AI agents from malicious instructions, untrusted data, and compromised tools before they can influence an agent's decisions or actions. The platform provides enterprises with the visibility and control necessary to securely deploy and operate AI agents at scale.