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Just a quick glance at public Crunchbase and PitchBook profiles turns up at least two dozen companies selling some form of AI agent security. Some vendors vet the tools that agents use, while others try to help companies control what data their agents can reach. Some others, like CrowdStrike, are building detection and response controls on the devices agents run, and still others are focused on finding and resolving unapproved AI usage.

The products differ, of course, but their promises to discover and govern agents sound quite similar, involving knowledge graphs, continuous monitoring, runtime security, tool access, MCP vetting, and the like.

Some are even updating their products to join the bandwagon. Until last year, AI security startup Reco was mostly selling software to map and secure SaaS and AI platforms. Now it’s repositioned around a broader solution that uses a context graph to connect agents to apps, people, accounts, and permissions, giving security teams a way to see what an agent can reach and cut off access it doesn’t need.

According to Reco’s co-founder and CEO, Ofer Klein, the biggest change over the past year that spurred the startup to broaden its scope was that companies are building and deploying AI agents faster than they can keep track of. At one of the startup’s Fortune 100 customers, he said, Reco’s platform found 21,000 agents the company didn’t know about. And at a large financial services customer, the startup claims it identified an agent set up by an ex-employee that could access Salesforce and share that data with a domain the company couldn’t see.

“The market demand right now for agent security is not only about the agent itself; it’s about the entire ecosystem end-to-end,” Klein told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview.

Klein’s not alone in stressing the urgency for companies to secure this sprawl. Security startup HiddenLayer‘s co-founder and CEO, Chris Sestito, earlier this month told me that when agents reach production, the scale of their costs and risk goes from theoretical to “full scale really quickly,” and that over 50 of his customers have AI agents in production touching critical systems and sensitive assets.

Cymphony, another AI startup, said at one U.S. public company, it found about 85,000 files that had become accessible to AI tools and agents.

There’s no doubt a ton of investors are interested in companies that can make a mint out of helping companies find and secure all these agents, and Reco has capitalized on that demand: The startup on Tuesday said it raised $55 million, building on a $30 million Series B in February. AT&T, a customer, invested in the extension via its venture arm, as did Forestay and Quadrille Capital.

Klein said the company’s valuation has “more than doubled” since the Series B was first announced in February, and vaguely estimated it in the “high hundreds of millions,” though he wouldn’t share specifics. Annual recurring revenue right now is in the “double-digit millions of dollars,” he said, and he expects it to triple this year. The startup has more than 100 customers, and financial services companies account for about 40% of the business.

Reco’s bet, it appears, is that its existing coverage of SaaS apps, and the AI agents they are increasingly offering, will help it stand out from the crowd. The company currently integrates with more than 280 apps, and Klein says new integrations can be added within days. Klein said the platform uses browser and network signals to find agents outside apps it connects to directly within companies, and it has controls to inspect prompts and tool calls.

The startup will use the new funding for hiring, sales, partnerships, and customer support. The new funding brings Reco’s total capital raised to $140 million.

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Ram is a financial and tech reporter and editor. He covered North American and European M&A, equity, regulatory news and debt markets at Reuters and Acuris Global, and has also written about travel, tourism, entertainment and books.

You can contact or verify outreach from Ram by emailing [email protected].

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As reported by Wired, an executive at PlusAI reportedly received a message from an acquaintance stating, “I have been proud of you for your adventure and success at PlusAI. Just saw two of your trucks near my work place! :)”

The problem here is that those two trucks were supposed to be outside a warehouse half a mile away.

It turns out that PlusAI has partnered with Nvidia (hence the Nvidia-emblazoned truck) to work on its autonomous vehicles, and these two trucks were part of a simulation. They were each filled with 20,000 lbs of sand. The trailers were forcibly detached from their vehicles, and thieves drove off with the cargo, only to dump it outside the acquaintance's office when they discovered the silica, instead of silicon, stashed inside.

If you were going to try and steal a truck trailer full of pricey equipment, it makes sense why anything with an Nvidia logo would be a potential target. The big green juggernaut became the world's first $5 trillion company late last year and has cashed in majorly on the AI boom.

Nvidia is continuing to make money hand over fist thanks to AI, and therefore one might expect that Nvidia-labelled trucks are filled with powerful GPUs or other such expensive equipment.

Still, this theft is probably a good sign to PlusAI that it needs to be very careful when it comes to monitoring stock, especially when it's got such a high-value company name slapped on the side of its trailers. If the sand simulation was a test to see if thieves would steal from its warehouse, I'd say its results have been well and truly achieved. I'd say the real reason was likely a bit more boring, though. Given it's a simulated load, that implies it was for weight-testing purposes.

All 40,000 lbs of sand have now been recovered by PlusAI, though the thieves have not yet been caught.

James is a more recent PC gaming convert, often admiring graphics cards, cases, and motherboards from afar. It was not until 2019, after just finishing a degree in law and media, that they decided to throw out the last few years of education, build their PC, and start writing about gaming instead. In that time, he has covered the latest doodads, contraptions, and gismos, and loved every second of it. Hey, it’s better than writing case briefs. %!s()

It's a pretty good deal, considering the latest budget entry from Google, the Pixel 10a, starts at $500. Whether the Pixel 8 is still worth it in 2026, though, depends on what you're looking for in a phone. The phone can be updated to Android 17 and was launched with the promise of receiving seven years of OS and security updates. This means you'll continue to receive Android updates on the Pixel 8 at least until 2030. The phone's hardware and battery health are far more likely to give out before you run into app compatibility issues.

It features a 6.2-inch, 120Hz OLED display with a peak brightness of 2,000 nits. Bezels are decently thin, and the camera visor gives it the same unmistakable Pixel look that Google continues to use in its latest devices. It offers a dual-camera setup, with 50-megapixel wide and 12-megapixel ultrawide shooters. AI in smartphones is something Google is doing noticeably better than others, and you see it a lot in the Pixel 8's camera suite with features like Magic Editor and Best Take. We were overall impressed with the camera performance of the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, both of which share the same primary sensor.

What about performance?

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Pixels are some of the

The Tensor G3 that powers the Pixel 8 is all right for casual games and can handle a few demanding titles, but it lacks the graphical horsepower to deliver smooth frame rates at higher settings. You might not care about the gaming prowess of a Snapdragon chip, but years down the line, that raw performance could mean the difference between a phone that's still very snappy with day-to-day operations and one that's beginning to show its age.

Quite a few Pixel 8 users have complained of choppy animations, long app launch times and overall poor system responsiveness as the device has gotten older. Battery life is also not the Pixel's strongest suit. With every new Pixel launch, it seems to be only a matter of time before reports of poor battery life start piling up.

You get a 4,575 mAh battery with the Pixel 8 that supports up to 27W charging. You also get wireless charging at up to 18W. None of these numbers are exciting, and you'd be better off eyeing other Android devices if battery life and performance are high on your list of priorities.

Where the Pixel 8 shines

The Pixel 8 may not be the fastest phone, but it beats most similarly priced alternatives in camera performance. Most people view Pixel UI's minimal and mostly bloat-free Android experience as one of its biggest plus points, so you'll likely be happy with the software experience. Besides timely OS updates, Google ships what it calls "Pixel Drops" to its devices. These are essentially feature updates that bring exciting new quality-of-life goodies like Screen Reactions and Bubbles. Not every new Pixel feature is ported to older devices, but with the Pixel 8 still being relatively new, you can expect it to receive a decent chunk of what Google showcases.

Another thing to like about the Pixel 8 is its design and build quality. Unlike most phones in this price range, you're getting a proper flagship build with an aluminum frame and glass back. There's an IP68 dust- and water-resistance rating to go along with it. Plus, reverse wireless charging lets you top up smaller accessories like wireless earbuds on the go.

That said, if you can snag a Pixel 9 for a little extra, you'd be upgrading to a 48-megapixel ultrawide camera, 12GB of RAM and the Tensor G4, which should age a little better. Even the Pixel 9a could be a better pick since it uses the same silicon as the Pixel 9 and enjoys an extra year of OS updates. It comes with a similar camera system, though it switches the Pixel 8's glass back for a plastic one. Amazon Renewed has the Pixel 9a listed at around $330 and the Pixel 9 at $420. %!s()