Baselayer, an identity and risk infrastructure provider trusted by one in five financial institutions nationwide, has raised a $35 million Series A led by M13. The round includes participation from Torch Capital, Picus Ventures, Afore Capital, and Matt Thompson of Socure. Alongside the funding, the company launched its Agentic Identity Suite to extend trust and verification capabilities to autonomous software agents.
The Agentic Commerce Trust Gap
Agentic commerce is expanding faster than the trust systems needed to protect it. Recent data from Stripe shows that 70 percent of commands used to access data through its API now come from AI agents. Major players including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Shopify have already launched agent commerce protocols and sales channels, making identity verification a pressing issue.
Baselayer's Existing Identity Network
Baselayer already helps answer equivalent questions for businesses across a wide range of financial relationships. Its platform serves more than 2,300 financial institutions and payments companies and has helped prevent over one billion dollars in fraud losses. Founded in 2024 by Timothy Hyde and Jonathan Awad, the company is now extending its proven infrastructure to autonomous agents.
Inside the Agentic Identity Suite
The Agentic Identity Suite is positioned as the industry's first interoperable trust layer and agentic fraud consortium for the global agentic economy. Baselayer works with agent builders, card networks, and financial institutions including FIS, Prove, Socure, Exa, Parallel Web Systems, Natural, Nevermined, and Lane. The company is also helping shape standards through the FIDO Alliance Authentication Working Group, Legal Context Protocol, and x402 Identity Working Group with Cloudflare, Google, Visa, and Mastercard.
A New Identity Question for Finance
Before a bank, merchant, or platform lets an agent transact, it must know who the agent represents, whether it is authorized to act, and whether the counterparty can be trusted. Financial infrastructure was not designed to recognize software that can open accounts, make purchases, or move money. Baselayer addresses this by enabling institutions to know cryptographically which agent they are dealing with and who that agent represents.
Leadership Perspectives
Jonathan Awad said every era of commerce has required a new trust layer, but historically that infrastructure is built only after fraud and abuse become impossible to ignore. Timothy Hyde emphasized that agents do not carry identification and static fraud controls can block good customers while allowing sophisticated attacks. The founders are focused on helping institutions verify agent identity, representation, and transaction authorization.
Investor View
Karl Alomar of M13 said AI agents are rapidly becoming economic actors, yet the identity infrastructure underneath commerce was never designed for software-driven activity. He noted that identity will become foundational and that Baselayer's existing network, risk data, and production infrastructure made it especially compelling. M13 manages 2.2 billion dollars in assets and has backed 18 companies at seed or Series A that later reached unicorn status.
About Baselayer
Baselayer is a risk and identity infrastructure platform serving more than 2,300 financial institutions, Fortune 500 companies, and government agencies. The company supports onboarding and underwriting for businesses, consumers, and the agents they deploy in a changing digital economy. Its network of institutional clients provides the distribution and underlying risk data needed for agentic identity verification.
This Series A funding and product launch mark a significant step toward securing autonomous commerce. By pairing an established institutional network with an interoperable agentic identity layer, Baselayer aims to help banks, merchants, and platforms safely verify software-driven transactions. The company is positioned to influence standards and infrastructure for the next phase of digital commerce.