Neo Security raises $100M from Bessemer and a16z to govern agentic software

Neo came out of stealth on July 20 with Craft Ventures and Merlin Ventures joining the two lead firms. The founders are former SentinelOne, Wiz and Palo Alto Networks executives, among them CEO Nick Warner. The company will spend the money on go-to-market and engineering teams. The product gives security teams an inventory of every AI agent and agentic-enabled app, risk scores, attribution of actions to a user or agent, and policy enforcement before risky activity occurs. Coverage extends to browser extensions, MCP servers and plugins, and the company says it blocks risky tool calls and data movement itself, without relying on another product. The timing reflects how quickly agents are spreading. Gartner projects 40 percent of enterprise applications will have agentic features by the end of 2026, up from 5 percent in 2025. The risk is that agents inherit human permissions and move across workflows in ways legacy security tools may read as legitimate. One commentator called the check a bet on pedigree as much as on any technical moat. For AI builders, agent governance is becoming a purchasing requirement. Enterprise buyers may soon ask vendors to show what their agents can access and how policy limits them. Companies shipping agents or embedding agentic features should expect security reviews to cover tool-call permissions, MCP exposure and audit trails.