The Equity crew was live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026! Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane took over the Builders Stage Tuesday morning to tackle a growing challenge for the AI industry: what happens when AI agents go off-script, and who’s responsible for keeping them in check?
Recent incidents, from Anthropic pulling internal evaluations off the live internet after agents misbehaved to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calling for an “emergency brake” on AI models, have brought agent security into focus. The Equity team unpacked whether the problem calls for better engineering, new regulation, or both, and why startups are raising millions to secure AI agents.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
The Anthropic agent mishaps, including a false police report that went nowhere after landing in a spam folder
Nadella’s call for an AI emergency brake, and why the hosts wonder what took so long
The funding race to secure AI agents, from AIR’s $50 million raise to Reco’s $55 million and Oak’s $60 million for agent identity, plus Sequoia-backed Cymphony
Why independent verification and certification could be key to building trust, and whether Big Tech will buy its way out of the problem
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro and what we’re excited for at Disrupt
01:34 Durability, security, and Anthropic’s rogue agents
04:41 Nadella’s “emergency brake” post
06:33 NVIDIA’s OpenShell and the engineering-vs-regulation debate
10:04 The agent security startup boom: AIR, Reco, Cymphony
13:38 When agents go rogue in real life
15:55 Certifications and standards
19:33 HiddenLayer and the jump to production
20:40 Will Big Tech just acquire these startups?
22:52 Consumer trust and agent adoption
25:05 Predictions: acquisitions vs. independent verifiers
27:26 What’s coming up at Disrupt
29:02 Outro
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