Barndoor AI Raises $13.6M in Series Seed to Deliver the First Control Plane for Agentic AI Workforces

Barndoor provides a single platform to control access, enforce policy, and monitor the activity of AI agents across organizations.

NEW YORK, May 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Barndoor AI launched as the first control plane to allow enterprises to take control of their AI workforce and announced its seed funding of $13.6M, led by Crosslink Capital, with participation by Preface Ventures, Precursor Ventures, Gaingels, Rob Hayes, Natalie Diggins, Scott & Cyan Banister, and more. Barndoor is the first and only centralized platform to govern and manage AI access, policy, and visibility across enterprises — giving IT and security teams the control they need, and business teams the freedom to move fast.

"Across any organization, dozens of autonomous agents are handling sensitive data, making changes, and introducing real risk," said Oren Michels, founder and CEO of Barndoor AI. "To manage this new AI workforce, IT teams must understand the full context — who's operating an agent, what their role is, what service they're accessing, and what action they're taking. Barndoor sits at that intersection, evaluating every request in context to ensure enterprises stay secure, compliant, and in control."

With Barndoor AI, enterprises can gain:

• Granular Agent Access Controls: Control what each agent can see and do based on specific context - the user operating it, their role in the organization, the service they are accessing, and the specific action they are attempting to take.
• Visibility: Get complete telemetry, audit trails, and real-time alerts to surface anomalies, monitor risk and prove compliance. Track agent usage, understand where value is created or where agents are being blocked, and adapt policies to safely scale AI across the enterprise.
• Policy Enforcement: Barndoor acts as a policy enforcement layer, inspecting and authorizing every AI agent request before it reaches your systems or alters your data.
• Secure Management for Any AI Agent: Manage every agent in one place — no matter where it runs or how it's built allowing enterprises to stay flexible as new AI tools and platforms develop.

Recently at the Hill and Valley Forum, Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, addressed the growth of AI within the enterprise landscape, noting "These agentic AIs are essentially robots — your digital workforce. HR will manage the biological workforce, and IT will become HR for agentic AI." Barndoor is addressing the workforce transformation by empowering enterprises to take control of their agentic workforce.

"There's no question that AI can unlock massive potential — but enterprises are struggling to stay in control as agents proliferate across teams and tools," said Eric Chin, Partner at Crosslink Capital. "Barndoor is solving this real and urgent challenge by giving companies the context-aware controls they need to manage AI safely and effectively. Oren and his team pioneered the API management category during the rise of mobile apps — giving enterprises control over how data moved between systems. Barndoor applies that same disciplined approach to AI, and we're thrilled to support them as they take on one of the most important challenges of the AI era."

ABOUT BARNDOOR AI
Founded in 2024, Barndoor AI is the first and only Control Plane for the agentic enterprise, giving IT and security the guardrails they need, and business teams the freedom to move fast without the risk. For more information, visit barndoor.ai.

SOURCE Barndoor AI