Scalekit Raises $5.5M to Build Authentication Stack for AI Agents as Identity Becomes Critical Bottleneck
AI Agent News
Gartner predicts that by 2028, one in four enterprise breaches will trace back to compromised AI agents. Yet today’s identity systems still assume browser logins and manual logouts—a fundamental mismatch as autonomous agents begin invoking business applications at scale.
Scalekit, founded by the team behind Freshworks’ authentication platform, just secured $5.5 million in seed funding to build the missing authentication infrastructure for AI agents. The round was led by Together Fund and Z47, positioning the startup to address what may become the most critical security bottleneck in enterprise AI deployment.
The Identity Crisis in Agentic Systems
For two decades, identity systems have been designed around a simple assumption: a human will log into software, browse around, and eventually log out. This worked fine when digital workflows required human oversight at every step. But AI agents operate fundamentally differently—they need to authenticate programmatically, act on behalf of users across multiple applications, and maintain least-privilege access without human intervention.
Current enterprise identity stacks force development teams into impossible choices. They can over-privilege agents with broad access tokens that pose massive security risks, or spend months building fragile workarounds that break whenever APIs change. Neither approach scales as organizations deploy hundreds or thousands of autonomous agents across their technology stack.
The problem becomes more acute as agents move beyond simple data retrieval to executing transactions, managing workflows, and accessing sensitive business systems. Unlike humans who can reason about appropriate access levels in context, agents need precise, programmatic permission boundaries that current OAuth flows simply weren’t designed to handle.
Agent-First Authentication Architecture
Scalekit’s approach starts with a fundamental architectural shift: designing identity systems for autonomous agents rather than retrofitting human-centric authentication. The platform provides drop-in OAuth 2.1 servers that development teams can deploy in minutes, giving agents the ability to safely act on behalf of users across applications like Gmail, Slack, HubSpot, and Notion.
The technical architecture centers on short-lived, scoped tokens that enforce least-privilege access principles automatically. Instead of issuing broad permissions that agents might misuse, Scalekit’s system dynamically generates tokens with precisely the permissions needed for each specific action. This approach eliminates the security-convenience tradeoff that has plagued enterprise authentication for years.
Satya Devarakonda, co-founder and CEO, explains the core insight: “For years, software focused on blocking bots. But now, business apps must let authenticated agents in and decide exactly what data they can read or write. Scalekit sits at that intersection of verifying every agent’s identity and enforcing precise, least-privilege access through a single drop-in toolkit.”
The platform’s modular design accommodates both purely autonomous agents and human-in-the-loop workflows, providing authentication infrastructure that can adapt as enterprises experiment with different levels of agent autonomy.
Production Validation and Enterprise Adoption
Scalekit’s general availability launch comes after extensive validation with early enterprise customers who have been struggling with makeshift authentication solutions. The platform is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing enterprise identity providers while adding the agent-specific capabilities that traditional systems lack.
The timing aligns with broader enterprise recognition that authentication infrastructure represents a fundamental blocker to agent deployment. Many organizations have built impressive AI agents in development environments, only to discover that their production identity systems can’t safely support autonomous operations at scale.
Ravi Madabhushi, co-founder and CTO, brings direct experience from scaling authentication for over 50,000 businesses at Freshworks: “After scaling auth for 50,000+ businesses at Freshworks, we saw the next challenge coming: identities that live in code, not user directories. Scalekit delivers short-lived scoped tokens and plug-in tooling that make agentic workflows secure.”
The founders’ track record at Freshworks provides crucial credibility as enterprises evaluate authentication infrastructure vendors. Building identity systems that work reliably across thousands of diverse customer environments requires deep operational expertise that can’t easily be replicated.
Infrastructure Investment Momentum
The seed round’s composition reflects growing investor confidence in agent infrastructure plays. Together Fund’s participation signals recognition that authentication will be foundational to the agent economy, while Z47’s involvement brings deep enterprise software experience to the cap table.
Girish Mathrubootham, Founding Partner at Together Fund, frames the opportunity: “AI agents are emerging as first-class users of business software, and current identity stacks can’t keep up. Scalekit spotted the shift early and built the missing agent identity infrastructure. We believe that foundation will power the next billion agent identities.”
The funding environment for agent infrastructure remains robust as enterprises recognize that deployment bottlenecks often lie in foundational systems rather than AI capabilities themselves. Authentication represents one of several infrastructure categories—alongside orchestration, observability, and compliance—that need fundamental rearchitecting for the agent era.
Pranay Desai, Managing Director at Z47, emphasizes the infrastructure angle: “Auth is one of those invisible layers of software: you only notice it when it fails. Getting it right for a world of autonomous agents is a non-negotiable challenge. Satya and Ravi bring lessons of building auth for tens of thousands of enterprises, and the ambition to reimagine it for the AI era.”
Looking Forward: The Agent Identity Layer
As enterprises prepare for millions of autonomous agents to join their technology stack, identity infrastructure will determine whether those interactions remain secure and auditable or become catastrophic vulnerabilities. Scalekit’s agent-first approach provides a blueprint for rethinking fundamental infrastructure assumptions in the context of autonomous operations.
The next twelve months will likely see broader recognition that authentication represents a critical path dependency for enterprise agent deployment. Organizations that invest early in proper agent identity infrastructure will have significant advantages in scaling autonomous operations safely.
With fresh capital and proven execution experience, Scalekit is positioned to become the standard for agent authentication as enterprises move from AI pilots to production-scale autonomous operations. The question isn’t whether agents will need sophisticated identity systems—it’s whether enterprises will build that infrastructure proactively or reactively after security incidents.
As enterprises begin deploying autonomous agents across their technology stacks, foundational infrastructure like authentication becomes increasingly critical. Platforms like Overclock complement dedicated identity solutions by providing orchestration and monitoring capabilities that help ensure agent operations remain secure and auditable as they scale.