San Francisco-based Keycard has officially emerged from stealth mode, announcing $38 million in funding across seed and Series A rounds to build what may become one of the most critical infrastructure layers of the AI era — identity and access management (IAM) for AI agents. Founded in 2025 by former senior executives from Snyk and Okta, Keycard is taking on the monumental task of securing how autonomous AI systems authenticate, access data, and execute tasks across production environments.
The company’s founding thesis is clear: as enterprises move beyond AI experimentation and begin deploying autonomous agents into real-world applications, they face a major security gap. These agents often require direct access to internal systems, APIs, and sensitive data — yet existing IAM systems were designed for humans, not autonomous entities. Keycard’s platform fills this void by introducing a cryptographically verifiable identity layer for non-human actors, enabling organizations to deploy agents safely and confidently.
At the heart of Keycard’s approach is a set of groundbreaking architectural features:
- Cryptographic identity verification ensures that every agent has a provable, tamper-proof identity, making impersonation or spoofing virtually impossible.
- Dynamic, task-scoped tokens replace static credentials like API keys. These ephemeral tokens are generated in real time, scoped to a specific agent, and valid only for the duration of a given task—dramatically reducing exposure to credential theft and misuse.
- Runtime contextual access controls allow organizations to enforce adaptive security policies based on live conditions, enabling granular governance over what each agent can access or perform at any given time.
Keycard’s $38 million raise includes a $30 million Series A led by Acrew Capital and an $8 million seed round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Boldstart Ventures, with additional participation from Essence Ventures, Exceptional Capital, Mantis VC, Modern Technical Fund, Tapestry Ventures, and Vermillion Cliffs Ventures. This investor mix underscores broad confidence that Keycard is addressing a foundational problem for the emerging agent economy—the security and governance of autonomous AI systems.
According to CEO Ian Livingstone, Keycard’s mission is to unlock the enterprise potential of AI agents by ensuring they operate with the same trust, control, and accountability as human users:
“You can’t run AI agents in production until you can trust them — and trust starts with identity and access.”
Keycard’s founding team brings together the developer-centric security expertise of Snyk with the identity and governance experience of Okta, creating a unique advantage in building security infrastructure that developers can easily adopt and enterprises can trust at scale. The company plans to use its funding to expand its research and development team, advance its IAM platform, and strengthen its integration with enterprise ecosystems.
As the world transitions toward an AI-driven operational model, Keycard is emerging as a pioneer in defining identity for machines. Its platform offers the missing trust layer needed for enterprises to deploy autonomous systems responsibly — combining cryptography, adaptive security, and enterprise-scale architecture to secure the next generation of digital actors.
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