Baselayer has raised $35 million in a Series A funding round to expand its identity infrastructure for artificial intelligence agents. The round was led by M13, with participation from Torch Capital, Picus Ventures, Afore Capital, and Matt Thompson of Socure. In addition to securing funding, the New York-based company has launched its Agentic Identity Suite.
The platform's primary goal is to help financial institutions detect autonomous agents before they can complete transactions. Baselayer was founded in 2023 by Jonathan Avad and Timothy Hyde. Jonathan Avad serves as CEO, and Timothy Hyde is the CTO.
Previously, the company focused on business identity and risk infrastructure for financial institutions. Currently, the platform supports over 2,300 financial institutions and payment companies. Baselayer claims that its technology has helped clients prevent over a billion dollars in fraud losses.
As AI agent systems increasingly perform tasks previously assigned to humans—such as opening accounts, moving funds, making purchases, and conducting business operations—a new trust challenge arises for financial infrastructure. Traditional identity systems were built with people and companies in mind but are not designed to verify autonomous software acting on behalf of a third party.
The company aims to become the trust layer for institutions dealing with autonomous agents, as they need to know which specific agent is operating and who authorized its actions. Furthermore, they need to understand the agent's scope of authority. Baselayer states that static fraud controls can block legitimate users while ignoring sophisticated attacks. Its Agentic Identity Suite is designed to close this gap and assess the possibility of a secure transaction by an agent.
The system is intended to provide cryptographic verification around agents and the organizations they represent. Baselayer is extending its existing business identity network into the realm of the agent economy. The company already provides identity verification services and risk infrastructure for financial and payment enterprises. Its network includes over 2,300 institutions across the United States. Baselayer also collaborates with agent developers, card networks, and payment companies. Among its partners and clients are FIS, Prove, Socure, Exa, and Parallel Web Systems.
The company is involved in shaping new standards for agent authentication and identification, including the FIDO Alliance Authentication Working Group and the x402 Identification Working Group. Baselayer works alongside companies such as Cloudflare, Google, Visa, and Mastercard.
According to the company, common standards will become critically important as agent commerce expands. This funding comes amid large payment companies developing infrastructure for AI-driven commerce. Stripe reported that about 70% of API requests now come from AI agents. Visa, Mastercard, and American Express have also implemented agent commerce protocols, and Shopify has provided agent sales channels to approximately one million merchants. These developments point to the broader application of autonomous systems in commercial operations.
McKinsey predicts that agent commerce could redirect between $3 trillion and $5 trillion in retail spending by 2030. Baselayer believes that such growth will require more robust identity and fraud prevention infrastructure. The company plans to evolve around emerging standards while expanding its agent products.
Karl Alomar, Managing Partner at M13, noted that Baselayer already possesses valuable operational infrastructure, citing its network of financial institutions and existing risk data. Baselayer stated that the new funding will be directed toward expansion into this nascent market.
