---
title: "AIR’s $50M Seed: Sequoia Then Greenoaks Bet on a Firewall for AI Agents"
description: "AIR emerged from stealth with $50M across two seeds — Sequoia-led $10M then Greenoaks-led $40M — to discover agents, continuously re-vet skills/MCP add-ons, and block unsafe connections."
date: 2026-09-01T00:00:00.000Z
tags: ["2026-vc-news", "startup-funding", "venture-capital", "cybersecurity", "ai-ml", "enterprise-saas"]
source: https://venturecapitaltracker.com/2026-air-security-50m-seed-sequoia-greenoaks
---

# AIR’s $50M Seed: Sequoia Then Greenoaks Bet on a Firewall for AI Agents

> AIR emerged from stealth with $50M across two seeds — Sequoia-led $10M then Greenoaks-led $40M — to discover agents, continuously re-vet skills/MCP add-ons, and block unsafe connections.

**[Sequoia](/fund/sequoia)** led a **$10 million** seed and **Greenoaks** led a follow-on **$40 million** seed — **$50 million** total — as **AIR** emerged from stealth on **September 1, 2026** (TechCrunch). Swish, Netz, and angels including Cognition’s Zach Frankel, Wiz’s Yinon Costica, Eon’s Ofir Ehrlich, Clay’s Varun Anand, and Anne Neuberger participated.

**Spine:** agent adoption is creating a **new software supply chain** (skills, plugins, MCP servers). AIR bets enterprises need an **inline firewall** that re-verifies those components continuously — not a static scan.

## Key facts

| Field | Detail |
| --- | --- |
| Company | AIR / AIR Security (founders Yair Saban, Niv Hoffman — Unit 8200) |
| Round | Two seeds: **$10M** (Sequoia) + **$40M** (Greenoaks) |
| Date | Announced September 1, 2026 |
| Headcount | ~40 (TechCrunch) |
| Traction (company) | **>20** customers; ~25% large enterprises; FS and pharma strongest |
| Claim | Filters out ~**27%** of add-ons/skills found online |

## Who uses the product — and for what job

**Users:** security and IT teams in enterprises rolling out agent fleets — especially regulated industries that cannot treat MCP add-ons like unsigned drivers.

**Job:** discover agents (including shadow AI), intercept skill/tool loads, compare against AIR’s continuously updated whitelist, and block unsafe connections.

## Why now

- Agents increasingly act like OSes with installable “drivers,” without the signing culture of modern kernels (Saban’s analogy to TechCrunch).
- Attackers can poison content and dependencies agents fetch rather than hacking the model directly.
- Category capital is already large elsewhere (Zenity’s $125M Series C in August; Noma’s prior $100M Series B) — AIR is racing for the **continuous vetting** wedge.

## Why Sequoia — portfolio fit

Sequoia partner Bogomil Balkansky: this is an **infrastructure re-verification problem** before it is a scanner problem. Same-day Sequoia also spun out [Empirik](/2026-empirik-21m-seed-sequoia) for change-risk prediction — a coherent “make autonomous software safe to run” theme.

| Dimension | Fit |
| --- | --- |
| Stage | Outsized seed to buy category time |
| Thesis | Control plane for agent supply chains |
| Risk | Platform bundling by labs/cloud; crowded agent-security field |

*Greenoaks, Swish, and Netz are covered without inventing `/fund/` pages.*

## What remains undisclosed

- Valuation / ownership after the stacked seeds
- ARR or ACV
- How the whitelist is audited independently
- Exact HQ footprint beyond Israel founding story / NY newswire dateline

## Competitive map

Noma, Zenity, Astrix, Operant and others also sell agent/MCP governance. AIR’s stated moat is **continuous ecosystem vetting**, not endpoint visibility alone.

## Takeaway

$50M at seed finances a standards race. The unresolved question: does “agent firewall” stay a durable category, or get absorbed into identity, SSE, and cloud security suites once MCP patterns stabilize?

### Sources

- [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/01/air-raises-50m-to-help-companies-vet-the-skills-and-add-ons-ai-agents-use/)
- [Newswire](https://www.newswire.com/news/air-emerges-from-stealth-with-50m-to-build-a-firewall-for-agents-22853509)

**By:** [Venture Capital Tracker](https://venturecapitaltracker.com/editorial-policy)

**Editorial note:** AI tools assisted with research, structure, or drafting. Venture Capital Tracker retains human editorial responsibility for factual accuracy, relevance, and source quality before publication.