This startup raised $21 million to clean up the AI agent mess hitting companies

AI agents are starting to outnumber humans in many high-tech workplaces, and they can be far trickier to monitor.

Opsin, an AI security and governance startup, announced Thursday it raised $21 million to meet the moment. As employees across the corporate world plug AI agents from the likes of OpenAI and Microsoft into more of their work, the company is helping to wrangle the new crop of potentially risky interlopers.

It's never been easier for non-technical workers to deploy agents — autonomous software built on AI that can complete tasks. As employees pump the software into their companies' work, code, and databases, they can lose sight of what the AI is actually doing.

When Opsin's CEO and cofounder, James Pham, realized security fears were slowing down AI use, he decided it was time to scale up his company, he told Business Insider.

"Agents are actually more similar to humans than you think," Pham said. "And the reason is because you don't understand what is going on in a human head, but you can judge them by their actions."

Opsin aims to provide a comprehensive view of what AI agents are actually doing within an organization and the risks that behavior might pose. SYN Ventures and Race Capital led the roughly 20-person company's new funding round, which will go toward expanding its sales and engineering teams.

Security pros need to clean up a mess of AI agents

Pham, an MIT alum, and one of his cofounders, Oz Wasserman, met at the firm Abnormal Security and each left in 2022. When they decided to launch a company, Pham said they spoke with hundreds of people to understand the concerns about bringing AI into businesses.

The issue of sensitive data leaped out. Pham said that person after person raised concerns that AI agents might access and misuse personal or confidential information.

Now, Opsin helps clients show where agents are active, which tools and data they access, what they were originally created to do, and which ones might need cleaning up. Then, the firm offers to continuously monitor companies' work, watch over agents, and flag risky behavior.

Take a smarter break in your day - and see how far you get.

Add BI in Google so our reporting is easier to find when you’re searching for what matters.

"At the end of the day, it's all about the behaviors of the users, the behavior of the agent," Pham said.

He said the scale of agents, even in relatively less tech-savvy companies, has stunned some customers. At one firm Opsin worked with, an agent made by a chief financial officer inadvertently gave other employees top-level access to financial information, Pham said.

AI's cyber threats could mean a boom

The cybersecurity industry has been in a frenzy, and now the growth of agents is adding to that storm. Glenn Chisholm, a cyber investor backing Opsin with SYN Ventures, told Business Insider that as companies use more AI products, hackers will find more targets.

"The more people that are doing it, the easier it is for an attacker to gain access and purchase," Chisholm said.

Cyberdefense stocks have soared this year, and Chisholm said he's seen more venture capital investment. Anthropic and OpenAI are each hiring aggressively in cybersecurity.

Opsin hopes it can make companies feel safer using Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise, and other products. Chisholm is optimistic that the industry will adapt to AI.

"The next couple of years are us working out how to get the most out of it, rather than sort of fearing the concept of it," he said.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at scouncil@businessinsider.com, or over text, Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 415-757-8198. Use a personal email address, a non-work WiFi network, and a non-work device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.