NeuralTrust Raises €17.2M to Secure AI Agents

The big picture: NeuralTrust, a Barcelona-based startup, announced a €17.2 million ($20 million) Seed round, which the company describes as the largest cybersecurity Seed financing raised by an EU company to date. The round was led by Alstin Capital, with participation from VentureFriends, Seaya, Kibo Ventures, Banc Sabadell, EA Ventures Plug and Play Fund, and Finaves, the venture capital fund of IESE Business School. NeuralTrust is also backed by public funding from the European Innovation Council and Spain’s State Research Agency (AEI).

Why it matters:

• Growing AI agent risk: Gartner predicts 40% of enterprises will demote or decommission autonomous AI agents by 2027 due to governance gaps, with Fortune 500 companies projected to operate over 150,000 agents each by 2028.
• Enterprise AI sprawl: AI agents are rapidly integrating into diverse enterprise operations, from customer service to back-office automation, often connecting to critical internal systems and external tools.
• Security blind spots: Most security teams lack visibility into the number of agents in operation, their permitted actions, or the ability to identify and prevent data leaks or unauthorized actions by compromised agents.

How it works:

• Unified visibility: NeuralTrust provides a single platform where users can view all AI agents across an organization, enabling management of their capabilities and real-time intervention for issues.
• Real-time threat detection: The platform inspects millions of agent interactions daily, identifying and stopping malicious attempts like data extraction, tool hijacking, or rule circumvention in real time.
• Comprehensive product suite: Key offerings include TrustGate, an agent gateway for brokering all LLM, MCP, and tool calls; TrustGuard, a runtime security engine for detecting threats across all agent platforms; and TrustLens, a posture management layer for identifying and tracking agent behavior.

The catch: The rapid proliferation of AI agents presents a significant challenge for traditional cybersecurity frameworks, which were not designed for autonomous, self-acting entities. While NeuralTrust offers a comprehensive control layer, its success hinges on continuous adaptation to the evolving AI threat landscape and the ability to integrate seamlessly across diverse enterprise AI deployments, which can be fragmented and complex. The market for AI security solutions is also becoming increasingly competitive.