Descope Raises $88M to Build Identity Infrastructure for AI Agent Economy
AI Agent News
Descope closed an $88 million seed round extension, bringing total funding to $88 million as the drag-and-drop external IAM platform positions itself at the center of enterprise AI agent deployment infrastructure.
Founded by the team behind Demisto (acquired by Palo Alto Networks), Descope addresses a critical bottleneck emerging across enterprise AI initiatives: how to securely manage identity and access for AI agents, MCP servers, and autonomous systems at scale. The extension round, available exclusively to existing investors including Notable Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Dell Technologies Capital, validates enterprise demand for purpose-built identity infrastructure as organizations move beyond AI pilots toward production deployments.
The Identity Infrastructure Gap
Enterprise AI agent adoption faces a fundamental scaling challenge. While organizations can deploy individual AI agents for specific use cases, managing authentication, authorization, and governance across dozens or hundreds of autonomous systems creates exponential complexity. Traditional customer identity and access management (CIAM) platforms weren’t designed for non-human identities that need to interact across complex enterprise workflows.
“The rise of AI agents and MCP servers requires a security rethink with identity at its center,” said Oren Yunger, Managing Partner at Notable Capital. The challenge compounds as enterprises move from proof-of-concept deployments to production environments where AI agents must securely access enterprise systems, interact with external APIs, and collaborate with human users while maintaining audit trails and compliance requirements.
Agentic Identity Control Plane Architecture
Descope’s response centers on what they term an “Agentic Identity Control Plane” – infrastructure designed specifically for policy-based access control, auditing, and lifecycle management across AI agent and MCP ecosystems. Unlike traditional identity providers that bolt on AI agent support, Descope built their platform from the ground up to handle both human and machine identities through visual workflow orchestration.
The platform enables organizations to create, modify, and manage identity journeys for users, business customers, partners, AI agents, and MCP servers using no-code/low-code visual workflows. This architectural approach allows enterprises to integrate AI agent authentication into existing enterprise systems rather than replacing core infrastructure, addressing a key adoption barrier identified by enterprise customers.
Key technical capabilities include the Identity Federation Broker for many-to-many identity federation flows, the Agentic Identity Hub for solving AI agent authentication challenges, and FedRAMP High Authorization for government and regulated industry deployments.
Enterprise Validation and Adoption Evidence
Descope’s customer base provides clear evidence of enterprise demand for purpose-built AI agent identity infrastructure. The company serves over 1,000 organizations including GoFundMe, Databricks, GoodRx, and MongoDB – companies that have committed executives to Descope’s advisory board, signaling strategic partnership beyond typical vendor relationships.
“Having Descope as a partner for authentication implementation has been a game-changer for our engineering and product teams,” said Arnie Katz, Chief Product and Technology Officer at GoFundMe. “The building-block nature of their platform helps us provide frictionless user experiences while saving developer time.”
The platform processes hundreds of millions of identities under management across startups to Fortune 500 enterprises, spanning healthcare, financial services, AI, B2B SaaS, ecommerce, and cybersecurity verticals. This scale demonstrates proven production deployment capabilities rather than experimental adoption.
Infrastructure Maturation and Market Position
Descope’s funding and customer adoption reflects broader infrastructure maturation in the AI agent economy. The company’s recognition across multiple analyst reports – including KuppingerCole Rising Star status and inclusion in Gartner Hype Cycle Reports – indicates institutional validation of the category.
The founding team’s track record provides additional validation. CEO Slavik Markovich and the team previously built Demisto, the Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) platform that Palo Alto Networks acquired, demonstrating experience scaling security infrastructure for enterprise environments.
The company’s product roadmap includes continued R&D investment in agentic identity capabilities, platform expansion to new regions, and team growth across engineering, product, and customer experience functions. This infrastructure focus positions Descope to capture value as enterprises scale AI agent deployments from dozens to thousands of autonomous systems.
Looking Forward: Identity as AI Agent Infrastructure
Descope’s funding represents growing recognition that identity infrastructure becomes increasingly critical as AI agents proliferate across enterprise environments. The company’s no-code/low-code approach addresses developer productivity concerns while providing the security controls and audit capabilities required for regulated industries.
The platform’s focus on visual workflow orchestration and enterprise integration rather than replacement positions it to capture value as organizations move from experimental AI agent deployments to production-scale automation. With enterprises expecting to manage thousands of AI agents within the next several years, purpose-built identity infrastructure becomes essential rather than optional.
Descope’s approach demonstrates how infrastructure companies can capture value by solving deployment bottlenecks rather than competing on AI capabilities. Overclock provides similar orchestration infrastructure for AI agent workflows, enabling teams to automate complex business processes without managing underlying deployment complexity. Learn more about AI agent orchestration.