Manifold Raises $8M Seed to Secure Autonomous AI Agents at Runtime
Manifold, an AI Detection and Response (AIDR) platform, raised $8 million in seed funding led by Costanoa Ventures with participation from Cherry Ventures, Rain Capital, and Modern Technical Fund. Angel investors include former Uber CSO Joe Sullivan and former Google DeepMind CISO Vijay Bolina.
The company was founded by Neal Swaelens, Oleksandr Yaremchuk, and Michael McKenna. Swaelens and Yaremchuk previously created LLM Guard at Laiyer AI — the most widely adopted open-source LLM firewall — which was acquired by Protect AI (later acquired by Palo Alto Networks).
Manifold's AIDR platform addresses a growing blind spot: first-generation AI security was built for models that talk, not agents that act. As autonomous AI agents spread across enterprise endpoints — executing code, accessing files, making API calls — the attack surface expands far beyond prompt injection. Manifold monitors agent behavior at runtime to detect and respond to anomalies before damage occurs.
https://www.manifold.security
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The company was founded by Neal Swaelens, Oleksandr Yaremchuk, and Michael McKenna. Swaelens and Yaremchuk previously created LLM Guard at Laiyer AI — the most widely adopted open-source LLM firewall — which was acquired by Protect AI (later acquired by Palo Alto Networks).
Manifold's AIDR platform addresses a growing blind spot: first-generation AI security was built for models that talk, not agents that act. As autonomous AI agents spread across enterprise endpoints — executing code, accessing files, making API calls — the attack surface expands far beyond prompt injection. Manifold monitors agent behavior at runtime to detect and respond to anomalies before damage occurs.
https://www.manifold.security
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