Baselayer Raises $35M Series A to Build Identity Infrastructure for AI Agents

The identity and risk infrastructure startup is extending technology already used across more than 2,300 financial institutions to verify the identity and authority of AI agents.

Baselayer has raised a $35 million Series A led by M13, as the identity and risk infrastructure company expands from verifying businesses into determining whether AI agents are authorized to act and transact on their behalf.

The financing, announced September 22, included participation from Torch Capital, Picus Ventures, Afore Capital and Matt Thompson of Socure. Alongside the round, Baselayer launched its Agentic Identity Suite, designed to help financial institutions and payments companies establish who deployed an AI agent, whom it represents and what it is authorized to do.

The expansion puts Baselayer into an emerging infrastructure category created as AI moves beyond generating information and begins performing actions across financial and commercial systems.

Baselayer Extends Business Verification to AI Agents

Founded in 2024 by CEO Jonathan Awad and CTO Timothy Hyde, Baselayer initially concentrated on business identity verification and risk assessment.

Its existing platform brings together identity, credit, fraud and other risk signals that financial institutions can use when onboarding and underwriting businesses. Baselayer says its network now spans more than 2,300 financial institutions, equivalent to more than one in five U.S. financial institutions.

The figure is a company-reported measure, but the installed base is strategically relevant to Baselayer’s next market. The company is attempting to extend an existing identity network into agentic commerce rather than constructing an AI-agent verification system without prior financial-services distribution.

Managing Partner Karl Alomar said Baselayer already has financial-institution distribution, risk data and infrastructure in production, which the venture firm believes can be applied to determining which agents are authorized to act for businesses.

That distinction could become increasingly important as autonomous software gains the ability to initiate commercial activity. Financial institutions have long established procedures for identifying people and businesses; an AI agent acting for either introduces another identity and authorization layer.

Agentic Identity Suite Targets Authorization and Fraud Risk

Baselayer’s Agentic Identity Suite is built around what it calls Know Your Agent, or KYA.

The system is intended to cryptographically connect an agent with the platform that deployed it and the business that authorized it. The objective is to give institutions a way to establish an auditable chain between an automated action and the organization responsible for it.

Baselayer says the suite also provides tools allowing agents to verify counterparties before transacting with them. Its broader business platform already covers business verification and risk signals, giving the company an existing data layer on which to build those checks.

The company is also participating in groups working on standards relevant to agentic identity, including the FIDO Alliance Authentication Working Group, Legal Context Protocol and x402 Identity Working Group.

The challenge is not simply distinguishing humans from bots. If software is acting legitimately for a company, financial infrastructure may need to establish both the agent’s identity and the scope of authority delegated to it.

AI Agents Are Becoming More Active Across APIs

Baselayer’s financing comes as evidence emerges that AI agents are already interacting heavily with software infrastructure.

In June, Stripe reported that 70% of Stripe CLI requests for API resources were coming from agents, while agent traffic to its documentation had increased more than tenfold during 2025 and represented nearly 40% of documentation traffic.

That is narrower than saying 70% of all Stripe API activity comes from agents: Stripe specifically described requests made through its command-line interface for API resources. But the data illustrates how quickly automated systems are moving from consuming information toward independently writing software and interacting with APIs.

For financial services, that development raises questions familiar from human and business identity systems: who is making a request, whether that actor is legitimate and what it has permission to do.

Baselayer is betting that those questions will create a new identity infrastructure market.

Existing Financial Relationships Could Matter in the Agentic Economy

Financial services can be a difficult market for young technology vendors to penetrate. Banks and other regulated institutions typically subject prospective providers to security, compliance, risk and procurement requirements before deploying technology in sensitive workflows.

Baselayer’s existing financial-institution footprint therefore represents more than distribution. It potentially provides a base of institutional relationships, transaction signals and business identity information that can be applied to its agentic products.

The company says its customers have collectively prevented more than $1 billion in fraud losses using its infrastructure, although that figure is company-reported and has not been independently audited.

Baselayer is working with companies including FIS, Prove, Socure, Exa, Parallel Web Systems, Natural, Nevermined and Lane on identity and risk solutions for agent transactions.

That network could become particularly relevant if agent identity develops similarly to other financial risk systems, where data gathered across institutions can improve the ability to identify suspicious behavior that may not be visible to any single participant.

Series A Builds on Baselayer’s Earlier Funding

The $35 million financing follows Baselayer’s earlier seed round and brings its disclosed capital raised to roughly $40 million. The company did not disclose a valuation for the Series A.

The round also reflects a broader investment thesis forming around agentic AI: as software becomes capable of acting rather than merely answering questions, supporting infrastructure for identity, authorization, security and governance may become increasingly important.

For Baselayer, the opportunity is closely connected to the business it had already built. Its original question was whether a financial institution could trust a business seeking access to financial products. Its new products extend that problem one level further — establishing whether software claiming to represent that business is legitimate and authorized to act.

Whether a common standard for agent identity ultimately emerges remains unsettled. But with AI agents increasingly interacting with commercial infrastructure, the ability to establish who — or what — is authorized to move money is becoming a more immediate problem for financial institutions.