Keycard: The Identity and Access Platform for AI Agents, Welcome to boldstart!

The AI agent wave is coming.

Thousands of autonomous workers are about to flood enterprise systems.

And without identity and access guardrails… it’s chaos.

That’s why we’re fired 🔥 up to welcome Keycard to the boldstart family, building the identity and access platform for the agentic era. We’re thrilled to co-lead the $8M Inception round with Andreessen Horowitz and double down in the $30M Series A led by Acrew Capital.

We’ve worked closely with Ian Livingstone and Matt Creager for over a decade; backing them first at Manifold (acquired by Snyk, a portfolio co) and watching them help scale Snyk from $30M to $300M. Add Jared Hanson, creator of Passport.js and former Chief Architect at Auth0, and you’ve got the dream team tackling the agent identity crisis. Winning here takes deep developer empathy and security from day one, and this team is built to deliver.

Keycard is the missing trust layer that moves AI agents safely from lab to production, The platform identifies AI agents, lets users assign task-based permissions, enforces policy in real time, tracks all activity, and seamlessly integrates with existing identity systems. It gives organizations full trust to deploy agents in production, ensuring they only act as intended.

Existing identity and access solutions weren’t built for AI agents. Humans are static; agents are ephemeral, autonomous, and spawn by the thousands across systems. Identity chaos is already here. Standards like MCP and OAuth extensions are emerging, and Keycard is already leading the way with the first production implementation of OAuth 2.1 Client ID Metadata Documents for MCP.

We’ve partnered with Ian and Matt for over a decade from the earliest days at Manifold to its exit to Snyk and through their experience helping Snyk scale. We’ve seen firsthand their unique mix of infrastructure chops, deep empathy for developers, and security-first execution. Pair that with Jared, who architected identity at Auth0/Okta and built Passport.js, downloaded millions of times every week, and you’ve got the team to define identity and trust for the agentic era.

At boldstart, our Autonomous Enterprise thesis starts with a hard truth: to win the agent era, you must rebuild and rewire core infrastructure for a world where agents outnumber humans 100—1000:1. In that world, the operating principle is trust.

Keycard gives enterprises cryptographic proof of who an agent is, who it acts for, and what it can access along with instant revocation and dynamic controls. It’s how enterprises will safely unleash agents at scale.

The companies that figure out how to deploy agents safely and at scale will have an enormous competitive advantage. Keycard provides the guardrails that allow agents to act on behalf of people and businesses, transforming AI from a productivity tool into an autonomous workforce.

We’re thrilled to co-lead the $8M Inception round with a16z and double down in the $30M Series A with Acrew, joined by Mantis VC, Tapestry Ventures, Essence Ventures, Exceptional Capital, Modern Technical Fund, Vermillion Cliffs Ventures and incredible angels including Ian Andrews (Groq), Ryan Carlson (Chainguard), Emilio Escobar (Datadog), Karl McGuinness (Okta), and Matias Woloski (Auth0).

We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Ian, Matt, and Jared on this mission to unlock the agent economy, for the second time for Ian and Matt. Welcome back to the boldstart family.

👉 keycard.ai

🗞️ Exclusive coverage: Upstarts Media & Alex Konrad