As AI agents become employees, NewCore emerges with $66M to give them identities
At a corporate data center in San Jose, a software engineer named Clara was reviewing access logs when she noticed an anomaly: an AI agent had accessed a restricted financial database without proper authentication. The system had treated the agent as a generic service account, not as a distinct identity with its own permissions. What had started as a minor security oversight soon escalated into a potential breach. The incident underscored a growing reality — as AI agents become more autonomous and embedded in workflows, they must be treated not as tools, but as employees with defined roles and access rights.
The Identity Crisis of the AI Workforce
The integration of AI agents into the corporate world is no longer speculative — it’s happening. From coding assistants to customer service bots, these digital workers are increasingly being deployed as if they were human colleagues. Goldman Sachs, for instance, experimented with an AI coding agent named Devin, while McKinsey reported that 25,000 AI agents now work alongside its 60,000 employees. But with this shift comes a new challenge: managing the identities of these AI workers in a secure, scalable manner.
Traditional identity and access management (IAM) systems were designed for humans, not for software entities that can self-modify, learn, and operate autonomously. Existing platforms, such as Okta and Microsoft’s Entra, are beginning to adapt, but they were not built for a world where AI agents have their own workflows, permissions, and lifecycle needs. This gap is where NewCore, a cybersecurity startup, sees opportunity.
A New Model for AI Identity
NewCore’s approach is fundamentally different. The startup’s platform is designed to manage both human and AI-agent identities in a unified system, treating AI agents as first-class identities with their own access controls, revocation policies, and lifecycle management. The idea is simple: just as a human employee needs an identity to access systems, so too must an AI agent.
The platform includes features like Agentic Skills, which allow AI coding assistants like Anthropic’s Claude Code or OpenAI’s Codex to operate as managed identities rather than through hard-coded credentials. This means AI agents can be granted, reviewed, and revoked access via a mobile app — a critical human oversight layer as autonomous systems become more prevalent.
- Split-key architecture divides critical credentials between the customer and the platform, reducing the risk of a single point of compromise.
- AI agents are treated as full participants in the identity ecosystem, with permissions and access that mirror those of human workers.
- The platform is designed to evolve with the increasing complexity of AI workflows, rather than retrofitting legacy systems.
The Road Ahead: A New Era of Enterprise Security
As AI agents take on more complex tasks, their integration into the enterprise will become more widespread. Zohar Alon, CEO of NewCore, believes that in a few years, AI agents could outnumber human workers in tech-focused companies. This prediction is not far-fetched — TCS Chairman N. Chandrasekaran recently suggested that AI agents could eventually rival the size of his company’s workforce.
The challenge, however, lies not in the AI itself, but in the infrastructure that supports it. Identity systems, which have long been a cornerstone of enterprise security, are now being tested in ways they were never designed for. NewCore’s approach is not just a technical solution — it’s a reimagining of how enterprises manage their workforce, human or otherwise.
As AI continues its rapid ascent in the corporate world, the need for secure, scalable identity management will only grow. NewCore is not just reacting to the trend — it’s positioning itself to define it. The question isn’t whether AI agents will be part of the workforce, but whether companies will be ready to manage them responsibly. And with $66 million in funding, NewCore is betting that the answer is yes.
