Nick Warner, the former president and chief operating officer of SentinelOne, is back in the spotlight as CEO of Neo, a stealthy new startup that just came up for air with a massive bankroll and a very specific mission. Neo is building security tools for the wave of AI-powered enterprise software, promising security teams a real-time control layer over so-called agentic software, the kind of programs that can reason, act and call tools on their own. Backed by top-tier Silicon Valley investors, the company plans to bulk up its engineering and go-to-market teams this year, a move that signals how fast money is rushing into the idea that autonomous AI will reshape corporate attack surfaces.
According to Neo's announcement, the startup exited stealth with $100 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners, along with participation from Craft Ventures and Merlin Ventures. Neo pitches its product as a real-time control layer that inventories agents, models, extensions and "MCP servers" and then enforces policy right at the endpoint. In its newsroom, the company also highlights a growing list of open engineering roles as it gears up for scale.
How Neo's control layer works
Neo's platform keeps a live catalog of active elements such as agents, models, extensions and MCP servers, then scans them for risky permissions and misconfigurations, with real-time attribution and enforcement that can pause or block suspect activity before it hits sensitive data, reports SecurityWeek. The product advertises fine-grained policy controls over tool calls, API access and data movement, plus an immutable audit trail that traces every action back to the originating human or agent. The idea is to close the gaps that appear as traditional enterprise software quietly picks up agentic capabilities.
Founders and pedigree
Neo was co-founded in 2025 by Nicholas (Nick) Warner, Shlomi Salem and Eran Shirazi, with Warner stepping in as chief executive after his stint as president and COO at SentinelOne, according to the Boston Business Journal. Salem serves as chief product officer and previously led detection engineering at SentinelOne, while Shirazi is the company's chief technology officer. Warner told the Business Journal that "many of us were inspired by the Matrix" when describing the team's motivation to build a set of controls for agentic software.
Backers and the bet on agentic risk
Investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer are effectively betting that enterprises will need a dedicated control layer as agentic features spread into everyday business apps, a case laid out by Andreessen partner Zane Lackey in coverage by SiliconANGLE. That reporting notes Neo plans to use its funding to expand both engineering and go-to-market organizations as demand ramps. Backers point to the founding team's history building large-scale security platforms as a key reason they see room for Neo in a crowded AI security market.
The Boston Business Journal adds that Neo expects to hire more than 20 people by year-end, with a particular focus on detection engineering talent and field-facing roles. In Boston, where cybersecurity and AI startups increasingly overlap, that kind of hiring push could spark quick competition for security engineers who are already in short supply. Neo's debut also fits into a broader rush of venture capital into tools that give security operations teams native, more precise controls over software that is becoming steadily more autonomous.
