Outerlimit raises $16m in pre-seed funding to build and define a new security architecture for agentic AI
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Outerlimit today emerged from stealth as the world’s first decentralized security and authorization layer designed specifically for securing agentic AI. Having raised $16 million in pre-seed funding from AlbionVC, Evolution Equity Partners and Crane Venture Partners, this represents one of the largest ever pre-seed funding rounds in cybersecurity.
Outerlimit was founded by cybersecurity entrepreneurs Tony Pepper and Neil Larkins, who led Egress Software to a successful acquisition by KnowBe4, a Vista Equity Partners portfolio company, in 2024, and Dr Peter Vincent, a theoretical neuroscientist with a PhD from the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre and the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at UCL. Together, the team is building a fundamental redesign of the security architecture required for agentic AI.
As enterprises grant agents access to systems, data, and APIs, existing approaches to identity and access management, runtime enforcement, and AI governance cannot provide provable observability and effective control required to scale agentic deployments safely.
“We’ve spent decades building security systems around human qualities such as loyalty, trust, compassion, and even fear which drive predictable decision-making,”said Dr Peter Vincent, Founder and CTO of Outerlimit. “In this new agentic era, where agents use reasoning models with access to tools that can impact the world, they simply don’t operate within these human constructs. Agents can change their behavior based on what they read, or how they interact with other agents, while acting at machine speed. Harnessing this powerful intelligence requires a fundamentally new security architecture – one that binds identity, authorization, and action into a single operation at the moment of execution.”
The Future of Agentic AI Depends on a Completely New Security Layer
Every generational shift in computing requires a new layer of security infrastructure. Outerlimit’s mission is to address the fundamental changes required to secure and control agents in the agentic era.
Extending Zero Trust to the agent action layer for the first time, Outerlimit uses a distributed architecture and cryptographic enforcement at the moment of tool execution. Rather than storing credentials, keys, or secrets in a single location, they are fragmented across the agent ecosystem and can only be reconstructed at the moment a tool is invoked. Decryption occurs only when the required identity, policy, and execution context are present and verified, ensuring every action is authorized before it executes. This moves Zero Trust beyond verifying who is acting and what it can access to deterministically control the action an agent is permitted to take.
“The demand to deploy agentic AI is unparalleled, but security teams are being asked to sign off on risks they cannot adequately control,” said Tony Pepper, CEO of Outerlimit. “Blocking adoption isn’t a strategy, it simply drives the use of unsanctioned AI outside of enterprise oversight. Today’s launch of Outerlimit represents a paradigm shift to securing agentic AI, creating a world where AI agents can be trusted implicitly because every action is provably observed, controlled, and compliant without limiting their expressiveness.”
The Pathway to Deterministic Enforcement
Outerlimit provides a structured pathway to enforcement, meeting customers where they are today. Its approach guides organizations from discovery and observability to deterministic enforcement at the agent action layer
- Discover: Identify agents, tools, MCP servers and shadow AI.
- Observe: Gain provable visibility and preserve multi-hop chain integrity
- Enforce: Apply deterministic controls to every agent action.
“We are excited about what Outerlimit is building, which represents a significant opportunity to disrupt and reframe the agentic AI security market” said Ed Lascelles, Partner at AlbionVC. “Tony, Neil, and Peter bring a rare combination of deep security expertise and proven founder pedigree. The strength of this funding round reflects our conviction in both the company and the scale of the market opportunity ahead.”
Ed Lascelles, Partner, AlbionVC
Other high-profile strategic angel investors backing Outerlimit include; Charles Gorintin, Co-Founder & CTO at Alan and Co-Founding Advisor at Mistral, Brian Murphy, Founder & CEO at ReliaQuest, Scott Price, Founder & CEO at A-lign, Sam Morgan, Global Head of Client Coverage, Global Banking and Markets at Goldman Sachs, Kyle Griswold, Partner at FTV Capital, Nicola Sinclair, Partner at Twin Track Ventures; David Garfield, Founder & CEO at Garrison (acquired by Everfox), and Manish Madhvani, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at GP Bullhound.
“The next phase of enterprise AI should not be a race to build the most agents. Instead, success should be measured by the ability of an organization to safely harness the full power of their agent deployments” concludes Dr Peter Vincent. “If intelligence is to become commoditized, trust will be the limiting factor. As we accelerate into a new era of co-intelligence, getting this right is a fundamental obligation for the sake of individuals, organizations, and international security.”.
Dr Peter Vincent, Co-founder, Outerlimit
“We are excited about what Outerlimit is building, which represents a significant opportunity to disrupt and reframe the agentic AI security market. Tony, Neil, and Peter bring a rare combination of deep security expertise and proven founder pedigree. The strength of this funding round reflects our conviction in both the company and the scale of the market opportunity ahead.”
Ed Lascelles, Partner AlbionVC
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