Highflame
Highflame is a private AI security company offering an Agent Control and Governance Platform that provides identity, authorization, and accountability for enterprise AI agents and MCP-based applications across security, engineering, IT, and compliance teams.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2023
- HeadquartersSan Francisco Bay Area, United States
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Highflame does
Highflame is a private AI security company headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area that provides an Agent Control and Governance Platform for enterprise customers deploying AI agents and MCP-based applications in production. The platform is purpose-built for AI agent identity, authorization, and accountability—addressing gaps left by API gateways, IAM tools, and AI proxies that were not designed for agentic workloads involving delegation chains, sub-agent lineage, and runtime tool authorization. Target buyers span enterprise security, engineering, IT & platform, and compliance teams who need to govern autonomous agents across OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude Code, LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, LlamaIndex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, Agentforce, Slack, Jira, Linear, Notion, and MCP-enabled services.
The company's core technology is the Agent Control Fabric, an identity, policy, and enforcement substrate built on open standards including SPIFFE/WIMSE, OAuth 2.1, RFC 8693, DPoP, OpenID CIBA, Cedar, and CAE/SSF. It issues cryptographically verifiable SPIFFE identities for agents, performs inline authorization decisions under 1ms latency, runs 150+ runtime signal detectors (in-process, ML-based, and cloud) on every agent run, and supports cascade revocation fleet-wide in under 3 seconds at 1000+ transactions per second. The product portfolio includes the managed Highflame Identity layer, the open-source ZeroID identity core (Apache 2.0), Highflame Shield for signal detection, MCP Gateway and MCP Security for Model Context Protocol governance, JavelinGuard for LLM safety, Ramparts for MCP server scanning, Palisade for model supply chain security, DeepContext for multi-turn attack defense, Overwatch for code agent security, Compass for mission drift enforcement, and a Browser Security Extension.
Highflame operates an enterprise field sales motion anchored on a "Book a Demo" CTA with 45-minute evaluation sessions; pricing is quote-based and not publicly disclosed. Revenue is generated through subscription recurring SaaS contracts on the Agent Control and Governance Platform. The company has achieved SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 attestations and self-attests to GDPR and HIPAA compliance. Distribution combines direct enterprise sales with product-led growth through the open-source ZeroID and Ramparts GitHub repositories. The company was founded around 2023, joined the NVIDIA Inception program in October 2023, and is led by CEO Sharath Rajasekar (also a CoSAI/OASIS Project Governing Board member) and Chief Commercial Officer Mike Pearl. No funding rounds, headcount, revenue figures, or named customer logos are disclosed in available source material.
Highflame firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Highflame
- Legal name
- Highflame Inc.
- Website
- https://highflame.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2023
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Highflame is a private AI security company offering an Agent Control and Governance Platform that provides identity, authorization, and accountability for enterprise AI agents and MCP-based applications across security, engineering, IT, and compliance teams.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Highflame industry classification
Industry- Product category
- AI Agent Security Platform
- NAICS
- Software Publishers (513210)
- 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), Prompt Security & Injection Defense (HDAAAKAE), Audit, Explainability & Accountability Tooling (traceability, reporting) (HDAAAKAL)
Keywords
Where Highflame is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Francisco Bay Area
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices1 record
Markets served
Highflame business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure, Operations
Revenue model
- Agent Control and Governance Platform: Commercial SaaS platform providing managed agent identity, authorization, and governance capabilities for enterprise production deployments. Combines ZeroID's open-source foundation with a managed service layer for inline authorization, runtime signal detection, and audit trails.
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels1 record
Marketing channels6 records
Highflame product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Highflame provides an enterprise AI security platform that governs autonomous AI agents, models, and MCP-based applications by issuing cryptographic identities, authorizing every action inline before execution, and producing tamper-evident signed audit records mapped to EU AI Act, NIST, OWASP, and MITRE frameworks. The Agent Control and Governance Platform is delivered as SaaS, private cloud, or on-premises and combines the managed Highflame Identity service with a suite of security modules (Highflame Shield, MCP Gateway, JavelinGuard, Ramparts, Palisade, DeepContext, Overwatch, Compass) targeted at Security, Engineering, IT & Platform, and Compliance buyers in large organizations.
Product overview
Highflame is a research-driven AI security company offering a unified Agent Control and Governance Platform for the agentic enterprise. The platform is architected around three core components: (1) Highflame Identity — the managed identity and authorization layer for production teams, built on the open-source ZeroID foundation; (2) Highflame Agent Control Fabric — the identity, policy, and enforcement substrate governing every agent action at every boundary, including inline authorization under 1ms, Highflame Shield signal detection (150+ runtime detectors), and cascade revocation; and (3) specialized security modules including MCP Gateway, MCP Security, Javelin Guard (LLM security models), Ramparts (MCP server scanner), Palisade (model supply chain security), DeepContext (multi-turn attack defense), Overwatch (code agent security), Highflame Compass (mission drift enforcement), and Browser Security Extension. The platform supports deployment as SaaS, private cloud, or on-premises, and integrates with Okta, Entra, SIEM platforms, and Tailscale Aperture.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- ZeroID: Open-source identity platform for autonomous AI agents, implementing identity and credentialing using RFC 8693 token exchange and OpenID Shared Signals Framework.
- JavelinGuard
- Ramparts
- Palisade
- DeepContext
- Overwatch
- Compass
Products and services
- Highflame Agent Control and Governance Platform Unified SaaS platform that sits between AI agents and everything they can reach, issuing cryptographic identities, making inline authorization decisions before actions run, and producing signed tamper-evident audit records. Sold to enterprise Security, Engineering, IT & Platform, and Compliance teams via direct field sales and a Book a Demo motion.
- Highflame Identity Managed Agent Identity and Authorization layer that issues verifiable SPIFFE identities for AI agents with owner attribution, trust tiers, and delegation depth, enabling just-in-time access and scoped ephemeral credentials for production agent fleets.
- ZeroID Open-source identity core (Apache 2.0) for autonomous AI agents, implementing verifiable identity and credentialing using RFC 8693 token exchange for delegation chains with automatic scope attenuation and real-time token revocation. Functions as a product-led growth mechanism feeding into the commercial Highflame Identity service.
- JavelinGuard Suite of transformer-based model architectures that detect prompt injection, jailbreak attempts, and malicious intent in AI agent dialogues including multi-turn and multi-modal conversations. Designed for integration with the Agent Control Fabric's signal detection layer.
- Ramparts Open-source Rust-based scanner for Model Context Protocol servers that identifies configuration vulnerabilities and indirect attack vectors such as MCP rug pulls, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, path traversal, command injection, SQL injection, and tool poisoning. Used by security and engineering teams assessing MCP server posture.
- MCP Security Defense-in-depth security layer for Model Context Protocol interactions, providing governed checkpoints for tool connections, authentication, policy enforcement, and logging across MCP-enabled agents and tools.
- Palisade Zero-trust security solution for the AI model supply chain, verifying the integrity and security of AI models and their associated supply chain components. Available on GitHub Marketplace.
- DeepContext Context-aware guardrail product that defends against multi-turn LLM attacks by analyzing conversation context across turns rather than treating each request in isolation.
- Overwatch Code agent security offering integrated into IDE and CLI workflows, providing runtime security for AI coding agents including policy enforcement on tool use and data access controls.
- Highflame Compass Runtime enforcement product that keeps autonomous agents aligned through extended operation by detecting and containing mission drift when agents gradually diverge from intended tasks.
- Highflame Browser Security Extension Browser extension that locally evaluates user prompts, file uploads, and clipboard content against enterprise security policies, syncing violation metadata to Highflame when connected to an enterprise account.
Quantifiable outcome
- 48% of production AI agents run unsecured, 85% have no formal accountability, 54% hit or suspected security incident — highlighting the market opportunity Highflame addresses
- +3 more outcomes
Companies that use Highflame
Customer profileSegments5 records
Ideal customer profiles5 records
Highflame technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration9 records
AI capability9 records
Feature8 records
Highflame partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Three partnerships are on record, tiered core, flagship and minor.
- TailscalecoreHighflame partnered with Tailscale to integrate its security platform with Tailscale's Aperture, a centralized gateway for AI traffic. The combined solution enables real-time security evaluation of AI agent interactions at the network layer, detecting risks including prompt injection, secret and credentials leakage, PII leakage, unsafe tool execution, and policy violations without requiring changes to agents or developer workflows. Aperture by Tailscale is currently in alpha and available to early users.
- Coalition for Secure AI (CoSAI)flagshipHighflame joined the Coalition for Secure AI (CoSAI) as a sponsoring member of the OASIS Open Project. CEO Sharath Rajasekar joined the Project Governing Board (PGB) as a voting member. The coalition focuses on software supply chain security for AI systems, preparing defenders for the changing cybersecurity landscape, AI security governance best practices, and secure design patterns for agentic systems.
- NVIDIA Inception ProgramminorHighflame was accepted into the NVIDIA Inception program, joining to accelerate AI security research. The program supports startups doing revolutionary work in AI, data science, and high-performance computing.
Scale indicators6 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Highflame competitors and assessment
Company assessmentBroad incumbents
- Microsoft Entra: Microsoft Entra (formerly Azure AD) is the leading enterprise identity platform for Microsoft-centric customers and is actively adding agent and workload identity capabilities. It overlaps with Highflame's identity and authorization layer but as part of a much wider identity and access management portfolio.
- Cloudflare: Cloudflare is a network and security platform that has added AI security, zero-trust, and developer gateway capabilities at the network layer. It competes with Highflame's Tailscale-integrated network-layer detection and broader zero-trust positioning for AI traffic.
- Kong: Kong is a leading API gateway and service mesh platform that is extending into AI agent gateway and traffic governance. It overlaps with Highflame's MCP Gateway and Agent Gateway modules for the same enterprise platform and engineering buyer segments.
- Okta: Okta is the dominant enterprise identity provider and is extending its platform to non-human identities and AI agents. It competes with Highflame for the security and IT buyer persona but offers a much broader identity portfolio rather than an agent-specific stack.
Direct peers
- Portkey: Portkey is an AI gateway and observability platform for LLM applications, offering routing, guardrails, and policy enforcement. It competes with Highflame at the AI traffic gateway layer for engineering and platform teams deploying production AI agents and LLM applications.
- Lasso Security: Lasso Security provides AI agent and LLM security including monitoring, policy enforcement, and risk management for enterprise generative AI deployments. It is a direct competitor to Highflame's Agent Control Fabric for security teams governing AI agent activity.
- Pangea: Pangea provides AI security guardrails and a developer platform for adding authentication, authorization, and security services to AI applications. It overlaps with Highflame's Shield signal detection and policy enforcement for AI workflows in enterprise deployments.
- Aim Security: Aim Security offers an enterprise AI security platform covering agent governance, data leakage prevention, and runtime controls for generative AI. It directly competes with Highflame's Agent Control Fabric for the same enterprise security and IT platform buyer segments.
- Lakera: Lakera provides AI application security focused on prompt injection, jailbreak defense, and LLM guardrails. It is directly comparable to Highflame's JavelinGuard and Shield signal detection capabilities, targeting similar security and engineering buyers in enterprises deploying AI applications.
Emerging players
- Reco: Reco provides AI security and SaaS security posture management focused on generative AI application risk, data exposure, and compliance. It addresses overlapping buyer personas (CISO, security architect) with a partial overlap on AI agent governance and policy enforcement.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
Highflame social profiles
Digital presenceHighflame compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance4 records
Highflame financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Highflame leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles2 records
Highflame funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Highflame M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Highflame
What does Highflame do?
Highflame provides an enterprise AI security platform that governs autonomous AI agents, models, and MCP-based applications by issuing cryptographic identities, authorizing every action inline before execution, and producing tamper-evident signed audit records mapped to EU AI Act, NIST, OWASP, and MITRE frameworks. The Agent Control and Governance Platform is delivered as SaaS, private cloud, or on-premises and combines the managed Highflame Identity service with a suite of security modules (Highflame Shield, MCP Gateway, JavelinGuard, Ramparts, Palisade, DeepContext, Overwatch, Compass) targeted at Security, Engineering, IT & Platform, and Compliance buyers in large organizations.
Is Highflame a public or private company?
Highflame is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Highflame founded?
Highflame was founded in 2023. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Highflame based?
Highflame is headquartered in San Francisco Bay Area, United States, in the North America region.
How does Highflame make money?
One revenue line is on record: agent Control and Governance Platform.
Who are Highflame's main competitors?
Broad incumbents on record are Microsoft Entra, Cloudflare, Kong and Okta. Direct peers are Portkey, Lasso Security, Pangea, Aim Security and Lakera. Reco is listed as an emerging player.
Does Highflame have an API?
No public API is recorded for Highflame.
What industry is Highflame in?
Highflame's product category is AI Agent Security Platform. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDAEANAG, Responsible AI, Security & Privacy Platforms (Safety, Guardrails, PII), with a secondary code of HDAAAKAJ, Identity, Access & Secrets Management for AI Systems (IAM for agents/models). Its NAICS code is 513210.