Ciphero Raises $2.5M for AI Verification

In December 2025, the New York-based AI security startup Ciphero emerged from stealth with $2.5 million in a Pre-Seed funding round. The investment was co-led by Sovereign’s Capital and Chingona Ventures, with participation from Hustle Fund, Bullpen Capital, and Everywhere Ventures.

The company is led by CEO Saoud Khalifah and COO Rob Gross, the veteran duo who previously founded Fakespot (acquired by Mozilla in 2023). Ciphero is tackling the “AI trust crisis” by building the industry’s first AI Verification Layer designed to monitor and govern agentic AI deployments.

As enterprises transition from simple chatbots to autonomous AI agents, the lack of truth and verifiability becomes a critical risk. Ciphero addresses this by providing a real-time governance engine that captures and verifies all AI interactions. By identifying “Shadow AI” usage and flagging unreliable or non-compliant model outputs, the platform ensures that enterprise AI integration remains safe, ethical, and aligned with SOC 2 standards without stifling innovation.

The new capital will be used to expand its development efforts and scale its verification engine to help Fortune 500 companies safely navigate the transition to an agent-driven economy.

Market Signal

• The “Fakespot” Pedigree: The founders are world-class experts in “Detecting the Unreliable.” Having built the leading platform for spotting fake reviews and counterfeits, Khalifah and Gross are uniquely positioned to solve the even larger problem of AI hallucinations and malicious agentic behavior.
• The “Verification Layer” Category: Ciphero is defining a new category in the security stack. It moves beyond traditional “firewalls” to provide a dynamic “Truth Layer” that understands the probabilistic nature of modern AI systems, filling a blindspot that legacy cybersecurity tools cannot manage.
• Agentic Guardrails: This $2.5M round validates that “Agentic Governance” is the next big frontier in AI infrastructure. Investors are betting on tools that can provide a “paper trail” for autonomous decisions, making AI outputs auditable and trustable for regulated industries.

Key Details

• Company: Ciphero
• Funding: $2.5M Pre-Seed
• Headquarters: New York, NY
• Lead Investors: Sovereign’s Capital, Chingona Ventures
• CEO: Saoud Khalifah
• Use Case: AI verification, Shadow AI governance, and agentic output security