All analysis was generated autonomously, without human review. Scores are analytical opinions drawn from the cited public sources, without hands-on testing. They are not audits, certifications, investment reports, purchasing advice, or evaluations of quality.
Knostic is a Virginia startup that secures how enterprises use AI, from assistant answers to AI-written code. Its two most built-out lines are a knowledge platform that governs what assistants such as Copilot, Glean, and Gemini may answer and Kirin, an IDE guardrail that blocks unsafe AI coding-agent actions in real time. The portfolio reaches further, adding AgentMesh, an agent-supply-chain scanner announced as joining VirusTotal's program, plus OpenAnt and OpenClaw Detect. Founded by Gadi Evron and Sounil Yu, the company secured about $16 million in spring 2025. The durability question is that assistant and IDE vendors own the platforms these controls depend on and could absorb them, no cited rule mandates need-to-know AI governance, and no customer is named in the reviewed record.
| Description | A need-to-know control layer that detects and limits oversharing in enterprise AI assistants such as Copilot and Glean, plus Kirin, which secures AI coding assistants from malicious extensions, MCP servers, and unsafe actions. | [f1] |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2023 | [f2] |
| HQ | Herndon, Virginia, USA | [f3] |
| Funding | $19M total | [f4] |
| Latest funding | $5M RSAC Innovation Sandbox SAFE (April 2025), after an $11M round in March 2025 | [f2] |
| Deployment | SaaS | [f5] |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type 2 | [f5] |
| Product | What it does |
|---|---|
| GenAI Knowledge Security Platform | Detects and limits knowledge oversharing in enterprise AI assistants such as Microsoft 365 Copilot, Glean, and Gemini, so answers match each user's need-to-know boundaries. |
| Kirin | Secures AI coding assistants such as Cursor, Claude Code, and GitHub Copilot by validating MCP servers and extensions, scanning dependencies, and blocking unsafe actions inside the IDE. |
| AgentMesh | Threat intelligence that continuously scans AI agent skills, MCP servers, and IDE extensions for prompt injection and supply chain threats, and feeds VirusTotal's Crowdsourced AI program. |
| Shadow AI Spotlight | Discovers unsanctioned shadow AI use across the enterprise, giving security teams visibility into which AI tools and assistants employees adopt and how they are used. |
| OpenAnt | Open-source, LLM-powered vulnerability discovery tool that analyzes source and binaries to surface real security flaws, offered in open source and as a managed service. |
| OpenClaw | Open-source security plugin for OpenClaw coding agents that prevents secret leaks, PII exposure, and destructive actions during agent runs. |
AI Defense Matrix
| Govern | Identify | Protect | Detect | Respond | Recover | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI-Workload Platforms Inference servers, training platforms, vector DB platforms, and the model-loading supply chain. | ||||||
| AI Orchestration Tools Agentic orchestration tools, plus their plugins, skills, hooks, system prompts, scaffolding, harnesses, configuration settings, and MCP clients on user devices. | ||||||
| AI-Generated Code Code produced by AI tools, AI-assisted reviews, AI-generated infrastructure-as-code and tests, and vibe-coded apps that bypass CI/CD. | ||||||
| AI Gateways & Routers MCP proxies and gateways, LLM routers, outbound AI-service traffic, shadow AI egress, and model-registry traffic. | ||||||
| AI Model Model weights, fine-tuning checkpoints, model cards, registries, AIBOM, and the third-party LLMs your enterprise consumes. | ||||||
| Training Data Datasets used for training, fine-tuning, and continued learning. | ||||||
| Runtime AI Data User prompts, inference inputs, RAG content, vector DB content, persistent agent memory, and interaction history. | ||||||
| AI Agent Identities AI agents as non-human principals, plus credentials, keys, permission scopes, service accounts, and delegation chains across agents and tools. |
Knostic Kirin secures AI coding assistants such as Cursor, Copilot, and Claude Code, inspecting MCP connections in real time, monitoring IDE extensions and plugins, and blocking risky components. It is mapped to the AI Defense Matrix. [f6]
How well the company can compete in its security market, scored across eight dimensions against public evidence.
| Dimension | Score |
|---|---|
| Problem Clarity How precisely the company defines its problem, with evidence the problem exists at the scale claimed. | 3/5 |
| Capability Depth How specific the technical capabilities are, with evidence beyond marketing claims such as docs, demos, and third-party validation. | 3/5 |
| Market Timing Whether the market is ready for this product, with evidence that buyers are actively seeking solutions. | 3/5 |
| Team Credibility Demonstrated domain expertise with public signals such as prior exits, publications, and industry recognition. | 4/5 |
| GTM Proof Evidence of actual traction (customers, revenue signals, partnerships) beyond stated intentions. | 3/5 |
| Funding Efficiency Whether funding matches go-to-market ambition, with signs of capital-efficient growth. | 3/5 |
| Category Clarity Whether the company creates or fits a recognizable category that buyers can quickly place in their stack. | 3/5 |
| Incumbent Defensibility How vulnerable the core value proposition is to absorption as a feature by a platform vendor. | 2/5 |
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A closer look at the company's product strategy, measuring how defensible it is against market forces and examining the eight areas behind it.
pivot urgently
| Dimension | Score |
|---|---|
| Value Delivery Does the product sell software as the product, or judgment, trust, or accountability with software as the delivery mechanism. | 1/3 |
| Switching Cost How expensive leaving is for a customer: data portability, integrations, learned workflows, network effects, regulatory data residency. | 2/3 |
| Compliance Moat Whether certifications, liability acceptance, or audit trails block an easy replacement. | 1/3 |
| Problem Complexity Whether the product requires ML, optimization, real-time systems, or years of specialized expertise. | 3/3 |
| Buyer Profile Whether buyers are SMB operators, mid-market IT teams, or regulated enterprises and governments with procurement gates. | 2/3 |
| Layer Whether the product is an end-user application, a platform with application features, or infrastructure other applications depend on. | 2/3 |
| Proprietary Data, Content, or IP Whether the product accumulates datasets, content licenses, or IP that a rival cannot recreate from scratch. | 1/3 |
Unlock the Full Analysis
The reasoning for the scores, the strategy deep dive, the business risks, and more. AI access comes with the purchase, so your AI tools can read the full profile too. You keep 12 months of access.
One-time purchase: $20 per profile.
UnlockReading several? Unlock the entire catalog.
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| f1 | Knostic homepage | official | 2026-06-12 |
| f2 | Virginia Business on the Knostic 2025 raises | press | 2026-06-11 |
| f3 | Knostic platform page footer address | official | 2026-06-11 |
| f4 | Virginia Business on the Knostic 2025 raises | press | 2026-06-15 |
| f5 | AI Defense Matrix Catalog entry | other | 2026-06-13 |
| f6 | AI Defense Matrix Catalog mapping | other | 2026-06-23 |
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| s1 | Knostic homepage “Knostic discovers and secures AI agents and coding assistants, as well as associated supply chain risks, including MCP servers, skills, IDE extensions, and rules.” | official | 2026-06-18 |
| s2 | Knostic GenAI Knowledge Security Platform page “Ensure safe rollout of Copilot, Glean, and Gemini enterprise-wide with granular control over AI answers.” | official | 2026-06-12 |
| s3 | Knostic about page “Sounil is the creator of the Cyber Defense Matrix and the DIE Triad. Previously, he was Bank of America's Chief Security Scientist and the CISO at JupiterOne. Chad Loeven, Chief Revenue Officer.” | official | 2026-06-18 |
| s4 | Kirin solution page “By validating MCP servers and extensions, scanning dependencies, and blocking unsafe actions in real time inside the IDE.” | official | 2026-06-12 |
| s5 | Kirin product site “Kirin secures AI coding assistants from prompt injections, rogue behavior, and unsafe execution, so you can code faster and safer.” | official | 2026-06-12 |
| s6 | Kirin pricing page “For individual developers / small teams (1 - 5 users) $0/mo” | official | 2026-06-12 |
| s7 | Knostic AgentMesh joins VirusTotal Crowdsourced AI program “AgentMesh continuously discovers, tracks, and scans AI agent skills, MCP servers, and IDE extensions for prompt injection and supply chain threats. Knostic’s AgentMesh is joining VirusTotal’s Crowdsourced AI program.” | official | 2026-07-01 |
| s8 | Knostic SaassyCode campaign research “A coordinated family of nineteen extensions, published over a 19-day window from May 20 to June 7, 2026 and still growing. YARA detection rules for the full family and Sysmon detection configurations are available from the Knostic Labs team on request.” | official | 2026-07-01 |
| s9 | SecurityWeek on the Knostic raise “Knostic, founded by veteran security pros Gadi Evron and Sounil Yu, has raised a total of $14 million to build and market a "knowledge control layer" that ensures that AI outputs adhere to a company's need-to-know principles.” | press | 2026-06-12 |
| s10 | SiliconANGLE on the Knostic raise “Knostic also automatically derives need-to-know levels across an organization by analyzing existing permissions and role descriptions.” | press | 2026-06-12 |
| s11 | Knostic funding announcement on PR Newswire “Knostic was founded in 2023 by veteran cybersecurity experts and innovators Gadi Evron (serial entrepreneur, previously from Citibank and PwC) and Sounil Yu (former Chief Security Scientist at Bank of America)” | official | 2026-06-12 |
| s12 | Calcalist on the Knostic raise “Knostic, a cybersecurity startup focused on controlling AI access, has secured an $11 million investment to address this growing risk.” | press | 2026-06-12 |
| s13 | Virginia Business on the Knostic 2025 raises “Knostic, which has about 30 employees, announced it had raised $11 million in funding. In April, the company won a $5 million simple agreement for future equity investment as a Top 10 finalist in the RSAC Innovation Sandbox. The investment brings Knostic’s total funding now to $19 million.” | press | 2026-07-01 |
| s14 | Knostic AWS Marketplace listing “Knostic offers an AWS-compatible solution that prevents both oversharing of sensitive data and undersharing of valuable business information in enterprise AI search tools through need-to-know access controls.” | official | 2026-06-12 |
| s15 | Knostic Microsoft commercial marketplace listing “It simulates employee roles to reveal what sensitive content Copilot might surface, then delivers prioritized, actionable reports highlighting risky SharePoint sites, OneDrive folders, and misclassified files.” | official | 2026-06-12 |
| s16 | Knostic Security Program page (SOC 2 Type 2) “Knostic engages reputable and accredited auditors and assessors to validate our security practices against internationally recognized frameworks and is SOC Type 2 certified.” | official | 2026-06-16 |
| s17 | Knostic OpenAnt free tool page “OpenAnt: Find Real Vulnerabilities with LLM-Powered Analysis. Why open source? Because our focus is protecting your coding agents, we like open source.” | official | 2026-07-01 |
| s18 | Futurum Group (Fernando Montenegro): The Hard(er) Challenge in Agent Governance Is Authorization “Knostic, focused on knowledge-layer governance and preventing AI oversharing across copilots and agents” | research | 2026-07-06 |
| s19 | Forrester: MCP Doesnt Stand For Many Critical Problems But Maybe It Should For CISOs “Knostic AI found over 1,800 MCP servers exposed to the internet, reminding security leaders of unsecured S3 buckets in AWS in the not so distant past.” | research | 2026-07-06 |
| s20 | SANS Institute (Rob T. Lee): Sounil Yu, the bigger risk is not using LLMs at all “He co-founded Knostic and now builds knowledge segmentation for AI” | research | 2026-07-06 |
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| s1 | Knostic homepage “Knostic discovers and secures AI agents and coding assistants, as well as associated supply chain risks, including MCP servers, skills, IDE extensions, and rules. We detect shadow AI, block data exfiltration, and stop destructive commands like rm -rf.” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s2 | Knostic GenAI Knowledge Security Platform page “Ensure safe rollout of Copilot, Glean, and Gemini enterprise-wide with granular control over AI answers.” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s3 | Knostic platform Assess simulation “Knostic tests over 20 prompt patterns per user persona, revealing hidden oversharing paths that traditional tools miss.” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s4 | Knostic Knowledge Oversharing Detection “Identifies inference-based exposures where AI combines data inappropriately across security boundaries.” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s5 | Kirin product site “Kirin secures AI coding assistants from prompt injections, rogue behavior, and unsafe execution, so you can code faster and safer.” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s6 | Kirin how it works “Kirin inspects, dependencies, cursor extensions, and MCP connections in real time, catching malicious or unsafe code before it spreads.” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s7 | Kirin IDE support and R and D quote “Cursor, Claude Code, and GitHub Copilot support available. Coming soon: Codex, Windsurf, JetBrains, and more.” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s8 | Kirin solution page FAQ “By validating MCP servers and extensions, scanning dependencies, and blocking unsafe actions in real time inside the IDE.” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s9 | Kirin pricing page “For growing teams (5+ users) $15/mo, per user” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s10 | Knostic SaassyCode campaign research “It documents the full nineteen-extension campaign family, new technical findings, and active indicators for defenders.” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s11 | Knostic AgentMesh and VirusTotal announcement “AgentMesh continuously discovers, tracks, and scans AI agent skills, MCP servers, and IDE extensions for prompt injection and supply chain threats.” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s12 | SecurityWeek on the Knostic raise “Knostic, a Virginia startup building technology to manage data leakage and oversharing with enterprise-class AI tools, has banked $11 million in a new funding round.” | press | 2026-07-08 |
| s13 | Knostic security program page “Knostic engages reputable and accredited auditors and assessors to validate our security practices against internationally recognized frameworks and is SOC Type 2 certified.” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s14 | Knostic about page Sounil Yu “Sounil is the creator of the Cyber Defense Matrix and the DIE Triad. Previously, he was Bank of America's Chief Security Scientist and the CISO at JupiterOne. He is a FAIR Institute Board Member and a GMU National Security Institute fellow.” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s15 | SecurityWeek on Knostic founders “Knostic, founded by veteran security pros Gadi Evron and Sounil Yu” | press | 2026-07-08 |
| s16 | SecurityWeek on Knostic seed investors “Silicon Valley CISO Investments) and previous backers DNX Ventures and Seedcamp also took equity positions.” | press | 2026-07-08 |
| s17 | Knostic platform resource on Copilot in Microsoft 365 “Safely Unlock Hidden Copilot Knowledge in Microsoft 365” | official | 2026-07-08 |
| s18 | Virginia Business on the Knostic 2025 raises “A Herndon cybersecurity startup creating fine-grained access controls to prevent data leaks secured approximately $16 million this spring.” | press | 2026-07-08 |
| s19 | Knostic homepage Get Started for Free product list (Kirin, AgentMesh, OpenAnt, OpenClaw Detect) “Security Across the Agentic Lifecycle” | official | 2026-07-17 |
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