Alter
YC S25New York City, US · Founded 2025 · 2 employees · 3 known investors
Alter provides an authentication layer and vault for AI agents to securely access third-party APIs and SaaS platforms. The platform handles OAuth tokens, API keys, fine-grained access policies, and audit logging through a single SDK.
Also known as Alter AI · Alter Vault
Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (S25)
Alter was founded in 2025 by Srikar Dandamuraju and Kevan Dodhia.
Investors · 3
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Alter, which markets its product as Alter Vault, offers an authorization layer that sits between applications or AI agents and the external APIs they call. Credentials — OAuth tokens and API keys — are stored once in a vault and injected per request, so that tokens are not held in application code, prompts, configuration files or environment variables. A single SDK call is described as covering credential storage, token refresh, policy evaluation and audit logging across 136 providers, with first-class integrations for LangChain, MCP (Model Context Protocol) and AWS.
The platform is organized around five capabilities: a credential vault; a policy engine that evaluates each request against customer-defined rules on a deny-by-default basis; agent identity, giving each agent its own keys and scopes traceable to a named person; human-in-the-loop approval gates for sensitive calls; and compliance and audit features producing a tamper-evident trail that can be streamed to a SIEM. An end-user-facing "Connect" widget handles OAuth consent so that end users authorize access to their own accounts. Documented use cases include calling APIs on behalf of users, giving an AI agent scoped access with its own audit trail, provisioning secrets for backend services in place of environment variables, serving Alter-managed credentials as tools through a customer-built MCP server, partitioning agent memory and sessions by verified identity, and building multi-user servers where credentials never enter the serving process. Named target providers include Google, Slack, GitHub, Salesforce, Notion and Linear.
Business model
Alter sells a platform product accessed through an SDK, positioned for engineering teams integrating agents and applications with external SaaS APIs. The website offers both a self-serve entry path ("start in 10 minutes") and a founder-led 30-minute demo walkthrough.
Traction
The website states support for 136 provider integrations and notes that the company is backed by Y Combinator.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market
Market position
Alter positions itself as a single authorization layer between agents and every API, contrasting its approach with the status quo of scattered keys in .env files, prompts and configs and a single over-scoped administrative credential shared across all of an organization's agents.
Stated points of difference include credentials never touching application code, deny-by-default policy checks on every request, per-agent identity and least-privilege scoping tied to a real person, optional human approval gates for sensitive calls, a tamper-evident audit trail suitable for auditors and SIEM export, and coverage of 136 providers through one SDK call.
Technology
The system operates on the live request path: an incoming agent request is authenticated, its identity verified, and its scope, rate limit and token freshness checked before the request is approved and credentials are injected as headers (for example an Authorization bearer token plus an Alter grant identifier). Tokens are decrypted at request time and proxied to the target API, and each call is written to an audit log recording action, agent, target, status and latency. The architecture is described as zero-trust with default-deny policy evaluation, per-agent identities and scopes, and a tamper-evident audit trail; delivery is via an SDK with support for MCP servers, AI agents, chatbots and conventional applications.
Go-to-market
Direct, founder-led sales via booked demos combined with developer self-serve onboarding, supported by documentation-style guides containing working code for each use case, and integrations with LangChain, MCP and AWS ecosystems.
Teams building AI agents, MCP servers, chatbots and multi-user applications that need to call third-party APIs on behalf of end users, including organizations with compliance and audit requirements that must evidence which agent took which action.
Compiled by commissioned research from 1 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Competitors · 1
by search overlap
Companies competing with Alter for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 1
launches, deals, and filingsAlter's website states that the company is backed by Y Combinator.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
▸Research sources · 1
primary sources listed
- Alteralterauth.com · web
1 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Alter do?
- Alter is an authorization and credential-vault layer that gives AI agents scoped access to third-party APIs.
- Who founded Alter?
- Alter was founded by Srikar Dandamuraju, Kevan Dodhia in 2025.
- Who are Alter's investors?
- Alter's investors include Y Combinator, boundless ventures, Good Capital.
- Where is Alter headquartered?
- Alter is headquartered in New York City, US.