Cygrid Raises $3M Pre-Seed to Stop Stolen-Identity Breaches Across Humans, Machines and AI Agents

Berlin-based cybersecurity startup Cygrid has raised €2.66 million (about $3 million) in pre-seed funding led by Atlantic (Atlantic Labs), the company announced on October 22 as it emerged from stealth.

D11Z.Ventures also participated, along with angel investors including Andreas Bermig, CEO of bonify/SCHUFA; Boris Gorin, VP Product at Zscaler; Vlad Tropko of AmberVale Capital; and other enterprise leaders.

Enforcing What Identities Can Do

Founded in January 2026, Cygrid has built an AI-native identity enforcement platform that maps human, non-human and AI agent identities into a single Identity Intelligence Graph. It enforces access decisions in three modes: pre-use, by evaluating access requests before an agent, app or integration receives them; out-of-band, by automatically correcting identity and configuration drift across connected systems; and in-band, through an MCP Gateway that checks AI agent tool calls before they reach target systems.

"Access control tells you who can log in. It says nothing about what they do next," said Dmitry Kharchenko, CEO and founder.

The Founding Team

Kharchenko was previously CTO at bonify, which was acquired by SCHUFA; CTO/CDO at Friendsurance, acquired by Cover Genius; and a tech leader at Firelayers, acquired by Proofpoint. Chief Security Architect Dekel Paz previously led teams at Zero Networks, Novartis and LightCyber, now part of Palo Alto Networks.

Customers and Use of Funds

Cygrid targets enterprises deploying AI agents, with design partners across fintech, e-commerce and SaaS, including Barfer's and Horizn Studios. The company will use the funding to expand its enforcement capabilities, grow its team, and scale go-to-market across Europe and beyond.

"AI agents are widening the identity attack surface faster than any control can keep up," said Marc-Olivier Lücke, general partner at Atlantic.

Source

Cygrid — "Cygrid raises €2.66M to prevent security breaches caused by stolen identities."