Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has led a $100 million funding round for Neo, a startup addressing a critical gap in enterprise security as artificial intelligence agents become embedded in business software. The funding, which also includes backing from Bessemer Venture Partners, Craft Ventures, and Merlin Ventures, comes as companies struggle to secure autonomous AI systems operating inside approved applications without visibility or control over their behavior.

The timing reflects an urgent market need. According to Gartner research cited by the company, only 5% of enterprise applications featured agentic capabilities in 2025, but that number will jump to 40% by the end of 2026. This rapid expansion is outpacing traditional security programs, leaving security operations teams scrambling to understand and govern AI agents that can reason, act, invoke tools, and move through workflows using legitimate user permissions.

Why Traditional Enterprise Security Is Failing Against AI Agents?

Enterprise security architectures were built for a fundamentally different world. Legacy systems assume deterministic applications, human users, and predictable data flows. Agentic systems behave differently. They can act independently, mimic user behavior, inherit permissions, chain tools together, and move across workflows in ways that appear legitimate to security tools designed for earlier eras of software.

The problem is compounded by how AI adoption happens in real organizations. Employees are adopting AI agents from the bottom up, while established software vendors are simultaneously embedding agentic capabilities into products already approved for enterprise use. This creates a shifting threat surface that security teams cannot easily track or control.

"Enterprise security was built for a world where software behaved predictably. That world is changing fast. AI agents and agentic capabilities are being embedded into browsers, developer tools, SaaS platforms, and traditional applications, giving software the ability to reason, act, invoke tools, and move through workflows with valid user permissions," said Nick Warner, CEO and Co-Founder of Neo.

Nick Warner, CEO and Co-Founder of Neo

What Does Neo's Security Control Layer Actually Do?

Neo's platform provides security operations teams with five core capabilities designed specifically for agentic software environments:

• Neoverse-Powered Software Inventory: Security teams receive a complete inventory of AI agents, AI-enabled applications, plugins, extensions, and traditional software becoming agentic, enriched by Neoverse, Neo's continuously updated knowledge base of agentic software capabilities, risks, and behaviors.
• Capability and Risk Intelligence: The platform helps teams understand what agentic and non-agentic software can do, what it can access, and whether it is configured safely for enterprise use.
• Real-Time Attribution: Each action produces an audit trail that ties activity back to the human, agent, application, or identity responsible for it.
• Granular Software Control: Organizations can enforce group or identity-specific policies for tool calls, API access, data movement, and agentic workflows.
• Native Enforcement: Neo enforces controls natively, enabling organizations to block risky activity, malicious models, and redirect out-of-bounds prompts without handing enforcement off to another tool.

The company was founded by veterans of major cybersecurity firms. CEO Nick Warner designed and built the go-to-market organization at SentinelOne and served as COO when the company went public in 2021. Co-founder Shlomi Salem led detection engineering at SentinelOne for over a decade, while co-founder Eran Shirazi previously led research and development programs after years in Israel's Unit 8200 vulnerability research group.

"Enterprise software is becoming agentic, changing how applications behave, what they can access, and how work gets done. Employees are rapidly adopting AI agents and software vendors are embedding agentic capabilities into products enterprises already use. Organizations need visibility into what this software can do and the ability to govern its behavior in real time," said Zane Lackey, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

Zane Lackey, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Why a16z and Bessemer Believe This Is a Major Market Opportunity?

The venture capital firms backing Neo see this as a foundational security category emerging from AI's transformation of enterprise software. Bessemer partner Elliott Robinson emphasized that execution will determine which companies define this era of security, and that Neo is tackling one of agentic security's hardest problems.

The investment reflects a broader shift in how venture capital views AI infrastructure. Rather than betting on consumer-facing AI applications, a16z and other leading firms are increasingly backing enterprise security and infrastructure plays that address the operational challenges created by rapid AI adoption. Neo's $100 million funding round positions the startup to scale its engineering and go-to-market teams as enterprises prioritize security initiatives to manage agentic software adoption.

"Agentic AI is creating a new security category as enterprise environments transform, becoming largely composed of software that can reason, act, and invoke tools on its own. Neo combines a clear architectural view of how to control this new software layer with a founding team that has built enterprise-grade security platforms at scale before," stated Elliott Robinson, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners.

Elliott Robinson, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners

The funding announcement signals that a16z sees agentic security as a critical infrastructure layer for the next phase of enterprise AI adoption. As AI agents become embedded in more business applications, the ability to inventory, understand, and control their behavior will become as essential as traditional endpoint security was in previous decades.