The Pulse
Baselayer Raises $35M to Verify AI Agents in Commerce
Baselayer has raised a $35 million Series A led by M13 and launched its Agentic Identity Suite for software acting on behalf of people and businesses.
AI.info Team ·
Baselayer wants banks to identify the software acting for customers
Baselayer is betting that AI agents will need identity checks as they begin acting for businesses and consumers. The company announced a $35 million Series A on September 22, led by M13, while launching its Agentic Identity Suite for software that can open accounts, make purchases, move money and enter into transactions on behalf of a person or business.
The funding includes participation from Torch Capital, Picus Ventures, Afore Capital and Matt Thompson of Socure. Baselayer says its platform already serves more than 2,300 financial institutions and payments companies and has helped customers prevent more than $1 billion in fraud losses. The company was founded in 2024 by Timothy Hyde and Jonathan Awad.
That expansion comes as payment networks, merchants and financial institutions prepare for software to initiate transactions. The release frames the central problem around determining who an agent represents, whether it is authorized to act and whether the party on the other side of a transaction can be trusted.
Baselayer extends its identity network to AI agents
Baselayer’s existing business provides identity verification and risk infrastructure for financial services. The company says it is now extending that infrastructure to autonomous agents acting and transacting on behalf of people and businesses.
Jonathan Awad, Baselayer’s co-founder and CEO, said the company wants to establish trust infrastructure before agentic commerce expands further.
“Every era of commerce has required a new trust layer, but historically that infrastructure gets built only after fraud and abuse make the problem impossible to ignore. Agentic commerce is moving too fast for the industry to repeat that mistake. We already help one in five U.S. financial institutions answer, ‘Can I trust this business?’ Now we're building the infrastructure they need to answer, ‘Can I trust this agent, who does it represent, and what is it allowed to do?’”
Jonathan Awad, co-founder and CEO of Baselayer
The company describes the Agentic Identity Suite as an interoperable trust layer and agentic fraud consortium for the global agentic economy. Baselayer says the suite is intended to address the gap between existing systems, which are built to recognize people and businesses, and autonomous software acting on their behalf.
Hyde says existing fraud controls do not recognize agents
Timothy Hyde, Baselayer’s co-founder and CTO, said autonomous software presents a distinct identity challenge for banks, merchants and platforms.
“Agents don't carry ID, and the infrastructure built to verify humans and businesses simply doesn't recognize them. Static fraud controls end up blocking good customers while sophisticated attacks walk through. We built the Agentic Identity Suite so any institution can know, cryptographically, which agent it's dealing with, who that agent represents, and whether its own agent can safely proceed with any transaction.”
Timothy Hyde, co-founder and CTO of Baselayer
Baselayer says it works with agent builders, card networks, financial institutions and payments companies including FIS, Prove, Socure, Exa, Parallel Web Systems, Natural, Nevermined and Lane. The company also says it is helping establish standards for the agentic economy through the FIDO Alliance Authentication Working Group, the Legal Context Protocol and the x402 Identity Working Group.
Those efforts include work alongside companies such as Cloudflare, Google, Visa and Mastercard. The company’s release does not describe separate products or services for agent directories, counterparty checks or delegation records.
M13 sees a new identity problem in machine-led payments
Karl Alomar, a managing partner at M13, said AI agents are becoming economic actors while the systems beneath commerce were designed for people and registered companies.
“AI agents are rapidly becoming economic actors, but the identity infrastructure underneath commerce was never designed for software that can open accounts, make purchases, move money, or enter into transactions on someone else's behalf.”
Karl Alomar, managing partner at M13
Alomar said Baselayer’s existing network, risk data and production infrastructure were among the reasons M13 led the round. M13 manages $2.2 billion in assets and has backed 18 companies at seed or Series A that later reached unicorn status, according to the announcement.
Baselayer’s immediate challenge is to make its identity infrastructure useful as autonomous transactions expand. The funding and product launch place the company in a market where financial institutions, merchants and payment companies must determine how to identify software, connect it to the people or businesses it represents and decide whether it can act.