Ciphero
11 employees on LinkedIn Β· 8 known investors
Ciphero provides a deterministic security layer that lets security teams observe, audit, and verify AI interactions across models, agents, and machines. Its engine combines proprietary verifiers (for prompt injection, malicious commands, secrets, and PII) with plain-English policies to inspect AI inputs, outputs, commands, and tool calls, and produce compliance-ready audit trails; its Orpheus product runs on endpoints to verify actions taken by coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor.
Founders & leadership
Investors Β· 8
Also in the syndicate Β· 6
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Ciphero is an enterprise AI security and verification company based in New York. It describes its core product as an "AI Verification Layer" that captures, verifies and governs AI interactions across an organization β covering employee use of AI tools, agentic deployments, agent-to-agent and model-to-model behavior, and unsanctioned "Shadow AI" activity. The stated goals are preventing leakage of sensitive data, blocking attacks, enforcing internal policies in real time, and supporting compliance standards such as SOC 2.
The platform is organized around three functions: observing every input, output, command and tool call produced by AI systems into a single searchable record; verifying those interactions using proprietary Verifiers (prompt injection, malicious commands, secrets, PII) together with customer-authored policies written in plain English; and producing a compliance-ready audit trail for security teams and regulators. The company contrasts this deterministic, pre-execution verification with scanners and reviews that run after the fact and with probabilistic guardrails it argues cannot be relied on to block.
Ciphero's first named product, Orpheus, is listed as available and is aimed at securing how AI is built. Rather than acting as a network gateway, Orpheus runs on the endpoint β on developer machines and in the cloud β verifying each command, file write and tool call inside the workflows of AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex and Cursor.
Founding story
Khalifah and Gross previously founded Fakespot, an AI-driven fake-review and counterfeit detection platform acquired by Mozilla in 2023. They started Ciphero after concluding that AI accuracy and security problems in enterprise workflows could not be handled by existing cybersecurity tooling, and that static guardrails such as conventional firewalls and DLP systems cannot control systems that behave dynamically and unpredictably.
Business model
Ciphero sells to medium and large enterprises and says it offers transparent pricing that does not vary with how much a customer uses the platform, in contrast to usage-based AI pricing. At launch it was deploying with a select group of design partners.
Subscription-style enterprise pricing described as transparent and not metered by usage volume.
Traction
The company launched publicly in December 2025 and reported working with a select group of design partners; its Orpheus product for AI coding agents is listed as available.
Latest developments
In December 2025 Ciphero emerged from stealth with $2.5 million in pre-seed funding, saying it would use the capital to build and expand its AI-native verification platform, grow its team, and continue work with design partners on enterprise rollouts.
βΈFull profile β market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
Ciphero claims to be building the first enterprise-grade AI Verification Layer, competing against static data-loss-prevention platforms, conventional firewalls and enterprise AI governance systems. It cites an AI-in-cybersecurity market valued at roughly $26.55B in 2024 and projected to exceed $234B within seven years.
Ciphero positions itself as AI-native rather than an adaptation of static DLP or firewall tooling, verifying interactions in real time across employees, agents and models, enforcing policies dynamically, checking outputs against internal sources of truth, and surfacing shadow AI that incumbent tools miss. It describes itself as a sovereign control layer independent of AI vendors and cloud providers, and characterizes its method as "AI that judges AI." For coding agents, it emphasizes endpoint enforcement that cannot be bypassed by routing around a gateway, with verification completed in milliseconds.
Technology
A verification engine combining proprietary Verifiers for prompt injection, malicious commands, secrets and PII with customer policies expressed in plain English, inspecting AI inputs, outputs, commands and tool calls in milliseconds wherever AI runs. Interactions are streamed into a single searchable organization-wide record and retained as an audit trail. Investors also reference a marketplace of AI verifiers. The Orpheus component executes on endpoints inside agent workflows to block actions before they run.
Go-to-market
Direct enterprise sales to the people responsible for AI security, procurement or deployment β primarily CISOs, CIOs and CTOs at organizations of more than 1,000 employees β supported by design-partner deployments and a 30-minute demo offered on its website, with initial deployment in an observe-only mode requiring no code changes.
Enterprise organizations running complex AI workflows, focused on companies with more than 1,000 employees, with security, compliance and engineering leadership as primary buyers; the company also states the platform is designed so smaller users can adopt it easily.
Geography
Headquartered in New York, New York, United States.
History
The company was founded in 2025 by Saoud Khalifah and Rob Gross together with Sen Tian. It operated in stealth before publicly launching in December 2025 alongside a $2.5 million oversubscribed pre-seed round co-led by Sovereign's Capital and Chingona Ventures. Khalifah serves as CEO, Gross as COO and Dr. Sen Tian as Chief AI Officer.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources β 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 β not independently audited.
Timeline Β· 3
launches, deals, and filingsCiphero announced a $2.5 million pre-seed round co-led by Sovereign's Capital and Chingona Ventures, with participation from BlueWing Ventures, Bullpen Capital, Everywhere Ventures, Fc Centripetal, Hustle Fund, Lotus Venture Partners, Propeller, Viaka and angel investors. Proceeds are earmarked for product development, expanding work with design partners, team growth and enterprise rollout of its verification layer.
$2.5M source β
The New York-based company publicly launched out of stealth mode alongside its pre-seed announcement, stating it was working with a select group of design partners.
Ciphero's website lists Orpheus as available, an endpoint-deployed product that verifies commands, file writes and tool calls made by AI coding agents including Claude Code, Codex and Cursor, locally and in the cloud.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
βΈResearch sources Β· 8
primary sources listed
- Cipherociphero.ai Β· web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Ciphero do?
- Ciphero is a New York AI security startup building a verification layer that captures, checks and governs enterprise AI interactions.
- Who founded Ciphero?
- Ciphero was founded by Rob Gross, Sen Tian.
- Who are Ciphero's investors?
- Ciphero's investors include Everywhere Ventures, Propeller Inc..