Baselayer raises $35M Series A to build identity infrastructure for AI agents

Baselayer just closed a $35M Series A led by M13, bringing the company’s total funding to roughly $40M. The round comes alongside the launch of something the company calls its Agentic Identity Suite, a set of tools designed to answer a question the financial industry is only starting to grapple with: how do you verify the identity of something that isn’t human? The startup, co-founded in February 2023 by CEO Jonathan Awad and CTO Timothy Hyde, has built its reputation on business verification for financial institutions. Now it’s expanding that infrastructure to cover AI agents, the autonomous software systems increasingly expected to handle payments, open accounts, and execute transactions on behalf of companies and individuals. From KYC to KYA The company’s new KYA tools use cryptographic credentials to verify three things about any AI agent attempting a financial transaction: where it came from, which entity it claims to represent, and whether it’s actually authorized to do what it’s trying to do. Instead of reusable passwords, the credentials are cryptographic, meaning they’re mathematically verifiable without being easily forged or reused. The business underneath Baselayer isn’...