Baselayer raises $35M Series A to bring identity checks to AI agents
What's the deal? Baselayer, an AI-powered startup that helps financial institutions verify businesses and assess fraud risk, has raised a $35 million Series A to extend its identity technology to AI agents. M13Dealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → led the round, with participation from Picus Capital, Torch CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Afore Capital, and Matt ThompsonDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → of Socure.
The financing brings the San Francisco-based company's total funding to about $40 million since its 2023 inception, according to co-founder and chief executive officer Jonathan Awad. Baselayer declined to disclose its valuation.
What does it do? Baselayer combines business identity, credit, and fraud data to help banks, fintech companies, and other financial-services providers evaluate prospective customers. It sells directly and through software companies that resell or rebrand its technology, with an initial focus on Know Your Business (KYB) identity verification, fraud detection, and risk management.
By the numbers: More than 2,000 financial institutions — over 20% of such institutions in the US — use Baselayer to onboard and underwrite merchants, Awad said. The startup reached eight figures in revenue in under two years and says it has helped customers prevent more than $1 billion in fraud losses.
Why now? As people increasingly use AI agents for tasks like booking reservations, it is harder to tell whether an agent's activity is legitimate or a bot scraping data or committing fraud. An agent may be built for a single task and vanish afterwards, leaving no history to evaluate.
"Agents spin up and they spin down," Awad said. "How can you trust this random one-task agent?"
The product: Alongside the raise, Baselayer is launching its Agentic Identity Suite, extending its identity network from businesses to the AI agents transacting on their behalf. The system, which it calls Know Your Agent (KYA), aims to determine who deployed an agent, who it represents, and whether it has permission to carry out a task — issuing authorised agents a credential they can present when making a purchase.
"What we set out to do was essentially bring risk assessment to the 21st century," Awad said.
The signal: The round lands in the top tier of US fintech Series A deals, ranking around the 95th percentile of more than 3,000 such rounds. It reflects a broader bet that as AI agents start transacting on behalf of people and businesses, verifying their authority becomes a new frontier for identity and fraud infrastructure.
Read more: PR Newswire
Image credit: Baselayer
