Who is the CEO of Manifold?

Neal Swaelens is the CEO of Manifold. The company was founded in 2024.

Where is Manifold located?

Manifold is headquartered in San Diego, USA.

What funding stage is Manifold at?

Manifold is currently at the Seed stage.

How many employees does Manifold have?

Manifold has approximately 10-50 employees.

Manifold

Category: AI in Cybersecurity

An AI Detection and Response (AIDR) platform that provides runtime visibility and security for autonomous AI agents operating on enterprise endpoints. Manifold was founded in 2024. The company is led by Neal Swaelens. Based in San Diego, USA. Team size: 10-50. Total funding raised: $8.0M. Latest round: Seed. Key investors include ["Costanoa Ventures","Cherry Ventures","Rain Capital","Modern Technical Fund"].

Founded: 2024
Headquarters: San Diego, USA
Team size: 10-50
Total funding: $8.0M

Value proposition

Closes the 'visibility gap' in autonomous AI by monitoring agent actions at runtime—tracking systems accessed and commands executed—to prevent unauthorized data exfiltration and system breaches without requiring proxies or gateways.

Products and solutions

["Agentic AI Detection and Response (AIDR) Platform","Enterprise Agent Governance Dashboard","Runtime Agent Visibility Engine","Autonomous Agent Anomaly Detection System"]

Unique value

Unlike first-generation AI security tools that focus on prompt/response filtering (firewalls), Manifold monitors the actual execution and behavior of autonomous agents at the endpoint level.

Target customer

Enterprise security operations centers (SOC), CISO offices, and organizations deploying autonomous coding agents or agentic workflows.

Industries served

["Cybersecurity","Enterprise Software","Financial Services","Technology & Cloud Infrastructure"]

Technology advantage

Founded by the creators of LLM Guard (the industry's most adopted open-source LLM firewall), the team possesses deep domain expertise in agentic AI runtime protection and visibility logic.

How they differentiate

While most AI security tools act as firewalls (filtering prompts/responses), Manifold provides 'AI Detection and Response' (AIDR) by monitoring the actual runtime behavior of autonomous agents on endpoints, tracking system calls and file access to prevent unauthorized actions.

Main competitors

["Protect AI","HiddenLayer","Lasso Security"]

Key partnerships

["Costanoa Ventures (Lead Investor)","Cherry Ventures","Rain Capital","Modern Technical Fund","Strategic Angel Investors (including former CSOs of Uber and Google DeepMind)"]

Notable customers

["Enterprise SOCs","CISO Offices","Organizations deploying autonomous coding agents"]

Major milestones

["Founding team successfully exited Laiyer AI (creators of LLM Guard) to Protect AI in early 2024","Official launch of the first AI Detection and Response (AIDR) platform for autonomous agents","Secured $8M Seed funding led by Costanoa Ventures in March 2025"]

Growth metrics

Emerging from stealth with a team of 10-50 employees and a founding team with a successful prior exit in the AI security space.

Market positioning

Early-stage category pioneer in Agentic AI security and runtime visibility.

Geographic focus

North America and Europe

Patents and IP

No registered patents disclosed as of latest update (March 2025)

About Neal Swaelens

Neal Swaelens is a serial entrepreneur and AI security expert. He was the Co-founder of Laiyer AI, where he developed LLM Guard, the industry's most widely adopted open-source LLM firewall. Following Laiyer AI's acquisition by Protect AI in early 2024, he served as Head of Product for LLM Security. His deep domain expertise is further backed by his tenure as a Principal Product Manager at Palo Alto Networks and his experience in venture capital at Amplifier and Plug and Play Tech Center.

Official website: https://www.manifold.security/