Barndoor AI

What Barndoor AI does

Barndoor AI, Inc. is a New York-based software company founded in 2024 that provides an enterprise AI governance platform positioned as an independent control plane for agentic AI workforces. The platform serves enterprise IT, security, platform engineering, finance, and compliance teams by governing AI agents, their Model Context Protocol (MCP) connections, LLM calls, and tool invocations across systems such as Salesforce, Slack, Jira, GitHub, Microsoft 365, Snowflake, Notion, Google Workspace, and Zendesk. Named customers include Sumo Logic, IntelePeer, and Syndio, and the company operates as a remote-first organization with team hubs in New York and San Francisco.

The platform is built around three core modules: MCP Governance (runtime policy enforcement with per-tool and per-action access controls, identity-aware scoping via IdP integration with RBAC/ABAC, full audit trails, and a universal kill switch), LLM Gateway (a universal endpoint connecting every model with routing, fallback logic, virtual key management, budget enforcement, and rate limiting), and Data Protection (a policy engine using regex and transformer-based classifiers to inspect, transform, or block sensitive data across prompts, tool calls, and responses). ToolIQ is an orchestration sub-product that filters MCP context per request to reduce token usage and improve accuracy by up to 95%. Venn.ai, launched as a sub-brand in February 2026, extends the platform to connect consumer AI tools such as Claude and ChatGPT to workplace applications with permissioned write access and human-in-the-loop controls. The architecture supports SaaS, private cloud, on-premises, and air-gapped deployment, is SOC 2 Type II certified, and exposes Python and TypeScript SDKs alongside a Platform API for policy-as-code (JSON/YAML) workflows integrated into CI/CD pipelines.

Barndoor AI operates a B2B subscription model with two paid tiers — Pro (MCP Governance-focused, up to 50 human identities, unlimited agents and MCP connections, annual billing) and Enterprise (full platform with LLM Gateway, Data Protection, unlimited identities, on-prem/air-gapped deployment, and 24/7 dedicated support with SLA, annual billing) — supplemented by a 14-day free trial (100K LLM requests, no credit card required) for product-led adoption. Venn.ai was released in free early access in February 2026 with paid plans planned. The go-to-market blends enterprise field sales (demo- and quote-based pricing) with thought leadership at events such as the Generative AI Summit, a 2026 MCP Gateway Buyer's Guide, and CNBC/podcast appearances by CEO Oren Michels. The company raised $13.6M in seed funding in May 2025 led by Crosslink Capital, with participation from Preface Ventures, Precursor Ventures, Gaingels, Rob Hayes, Natalie Diggins, and Scott & Cyan Banister.

Name

Barndoor AI

Legal name

Barndoor AI, Inc.

Website

https://barndoor.ai/

Company type

Private

Founded year

2024

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Barndoor AI provides an enterprise AI governance control plane that enforces access controls, policy, and audit across AI agents, MCP server connections, LLM calls, and enterprise tool invocations for IT, security, and platform engineering teams.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Enterprise AI Governance

NAICS

Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (5182), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518)

SIC

Services-Computer Integrated Systems Design (7373)

akta.pro primary industry

Responsible AI, Security & Privacy Platforms (Safety, Guardrails, PII) (HDAEANAG)

akta.pro secondary industries

Identity, Access & Secrets Management for AI Systems (IAM for agents/models) (HDAAAKAJ), Enterprise AI Governance, Risk & Compliance Platforms (Model Risk, Audit, Policies) (HDAEANAE), Audit, Explainability & Accountability Tooling (traceability, reporting) (HDAAAKAL)

Keywords

• AI agent governance
• MCP governance
• LLM gateway
• Enterprise AI security
• Data loss prevention

Headquarters

HQ city

New York

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Subscription - Pro Tier: MCP Governance for teams running AI in production. Includes up to 50 human identities, unlimited agent and MCP connections, RBAC & ABAC policies, ToolIQ orchestration, audit logs, AI & MCP registry, and email support. LLM Gateway add-on available separately.
2. Subscription - Enterprise Tier: Full platform with MCP Governance, LLM Gateway, data protection, and dedicated customer success. Includes unlimited human identities, cost control, prompt security, universal endpoint, SaaS/private cloud/on-prem/air-gapped deployment options, and 24/7 dedicated support with SLA.
3. Freemium / Early Access: Venn.ai (consumer/individual layer built on Barndoor) launched in free early access in February 2026, with paid plans planned for later. Barndoor core platform offers a 14-day free trial with 100K LLM requests included.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

Barndoor AI provides an enterprise AI governance platform that operates as a centralized control plane for agentic AI workforces. It enforces granular access controls, runtime policy enforcement, and full audit visibility across every AI agent, LLM call, MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, and tool call. The platform combines three solution pillars — MCP Governance, LLM Gateway, and Data Protection — into a single policy engine with identity-aware controls, policy-as-code authoring, and a Universal Kill Switch.

Product overview

Barndoor AI is an enterprise AI governance platform built as a control plane for agentic AI workforces. The platform is architected as a unified core platform (Barndoor AI) with two primary integrated modules: MCP Governance (for managing AI agents and their MCP server connections) and LLM Gateway (for routing, controlling, and observing LLM model calls). Data Protection is a cross-cutting policy engine that operates within both MCP Governance and LLM Gateway. ToolIQ serves as an orchestration layer for MCP tool selection and context filtering. Venn.ai is a sub-brand product that connects AI tools to business applications with governance. The platform also includes an Enterprise AI Tools Directory. All components share a unified policy engine, audit trail, and identity-aware access controls, providing a single control plane for IT and security teams to govern every AI agent, LLM call, and MCP tool interaction across the enterprise.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Venn.ai: Platform providing controlled, permissioned access to workplace applications for AI tools, connecting AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT to enterprise applications.
• ToolIQ

Products and services

• Barndoor AI Platform Centralized control plane platform for enterprise agentic AI governance, providing unified visibility, access controls, and policy enforcement across all AI agents, LLM calls, MCP servers, and tool calls within an organization. Targeted at enterprise IT, security, and platform engineering teams.
• MCP Governance Runtime governance layer for AI agents connecting to external tools and systems through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), enforcing per-tool and per-action access controls, logging every tool call for audit, and blocking actions that violate policy before they reach downstream systems. Supports identity-aware policies via enterprise IdPs and CRUD permission buckets. For enterprise IT and security teams.
• LLM Gateway Governance and enforcement layer between enterprise applications and LLM model providers, handling request routing, virtual key management, budget enforcement, and inline prompt/response inspection for PII, credentials, and data protection across all model calls. For enterprise platform engineering and FinOps teams.
• Data Protection Policy engine for inspecting, transforming, or blocking sensitive data at every prompt, tool call, tool response, and answer. Applies tokenization, masking, redaction, omission, or blocking for PII, credentials, and prompt injection patterns. Works across both LLM Gateway and MCP Governance surfaces. For enterprise security and compliance teams.
• ToolIQ MCP tool orchestration module that reduces AI processing costs by up to 95% by filtering irrelevant context and tools, routing only policy-approved MCP tools required for each task to the model. Improves accuracy and reliability by eliminating context window overload from large MCP server tool lists. For enterprise AI platform owners running large numbers of MCP servers.
• Venn.ai Wholly-owned Barndoor AI subsidiary platform that connects AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT) to workplace applications (Salesforce, Jira, Google, Notion, Google Drive, Zendesk, etc.), enabling AI agents to perform real actions with appropriate permissions, audit trails, and a human-in-the-loop write confirmation pause. Provides controlled, permissioned access via a single MCP connection.

Quantifiable outcome

• Reduces AI processing costs by up to 95% through ToolIQ intelligent context filtering
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration31 records

AI capability9 records

Feature7 records

Partnerships

Two partnerships are on record, tiered minor and core.

• The Wharton School, University of PennsylvaniaminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 16 May 2026Barndoor CEO Oren Michels engaged with Professor Kevin Werbach's AI governance classes at The Wharton School, speaking to undergrad and MBA students about AI governance, accountability, and practical governance frameworks. The collaboration supports academic understanding of enterprise AI oversight.
• Venn (by Barndoor AI)coreTechnology or Integration · 20 April 2026Venn.ai (a Barndoor AI subsidiary product) integrated with OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent, providing a governance layer that enables permission-based access to over 40 business applications including Google Drive, Notion, Slack, Zendesk, and Salesforce. The integration replaces complex workarounds with a single MCP connection and addresses the AI governance gap for enterprise and individual users.

Scale indicators7 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Broad incumbents

• Cloudflare AI Gateway: Cloudflare's AI Gateway provides LLM routing, caching, rate limiting, and observability across providers as part of Cloudflare's broader network and security platform. It is a broader incumbent that overlaps with Barndoor's LLM Gateway at lower cost and with significantly larger distribution.
• Palo Alto Networks (AI Security posture): Palo Alto Networks is a major cybersecurity incumbent actively extending into AI runtime security and LLM policy enforcement through its broader platform. Its scale and existing enterprise security relationships make it a long-term competitive threat to independent platforms like Barndoor.
• Kong Konnect: Kong's API platform now includes AI gateway capabilities for routing, rate limiting, and policy enforcement across LLM providers. As an established API management incumbent, it competes with Barndoor's enterprise LLM and MCP governance positioning.

Direct peers

• Lakera: Lakera provides AI security including prompt injection detection, data loss prevention, and AI guardrails. It is directly comparable to Barndoor's Data Protection module and shares the same enterprise AI security buyer.
• Portkey: Portkey is an AI gateway platform providing LLM routing, observability, cost controls, and guardrails for production AI applications. It competes head-to-head with Barndoor's LLM Gateway product on multi-model routing, virtual keys, and budget enforcement.
• Astrix Security: Astrix Security governs third-party AI and non-human identity connections to enterprise systems, including OAuth tokens and integrations. It directly competes with Barndoor's identity-aware access controls and MCP connection governance.
• Prompt Security: Prompt Security offers runtime AI security controls covering prompt injection, sensitive data detection, and AI agent governance. It overlaps with Barndoor's Data Protection and MCP governance capabilities for enterprise GenAI deployments.

Emerging players

• Protect AI: Protect AI provides AI security posture management (AI-SPM) and LLM scanning for vulnerabilities across model supply chains. While its focus is upstream model security rather than runtime governance, it competes for the same AI-security budget from CISOs and enterprise security teams.
• WhyLabs: WhyLabs provides AI observability and monitoring including guardrails, data quality, and security controls for LLMs. It overlaps with Barndoor's audit, anomaly detection, and policy enforcement features for production AI workloads.
• Citadel AI: Citadel AI (formerly Citadel Lens) offers AI quality monitoring, security testing, and guardrail tooling for enterprise ML systems. It is comparable to Barndoor's data protection and audit capabilities but with a stronger quality-monitoring emphasis.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/BarndoorAI
• Facebookfacebook.com/profile.php
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/barndoor-ai
• Instagraminstagram.com/barndoorai

Compliance1 record

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles11 records

Subsidiaries1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds1 record

Investors4 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A1 record

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Barndoor AI