CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Onyx Security vs Operant AI

Onyx Security sells a secure control plane for AI agents and models. Operant AI sells one platform covering Endpoints, Agents, MCPs, and AI applications. CISO Tribune files both under AI model and agent security. This page sets the two records side by side: what each sells, where it is based, who owns and funds it, the customers it names and its recent news, each fact numbered to its source.

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  • Onyx Security
  • Operant AI
Onyx Security vs Operant AI: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
Onyx SecurityOnyx Security sells a secure control plane for AI agents and models.onyx.securityOperant AIOperant AI sells one platform covering Endpoints, Agents, MCPs, and AI applications.operant.ai
What it sells
  • AI Security[1][7]Onyx provides the runtime and posture layer of the Onyx Secure AI Control Plane.
  • MCP Gateway[8]The MCP Gateway governs the agent-to-tool surface.
  • Operant Semantic Firewall[1][7]Understands the intent behind every agent action and enforces an allow, block, or redact decision inline, in real time.
  • Agent Protector[1][5][6]Inventories all AI agents operating within an organization's infrastructure.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesSan Francisco, United States[2]
Founded
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesPrivately held[1][3]
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
  • July 29, 2026Onyx Security announced a $113 million Series B funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.[15]
  • March 12, 2026Onyx Security officially launched operations after securing $40 million in initial funding.[14]
  • May 4, 2026Operant AI launched Operant Endpoint Protector, a new addition to its AI Defense Platform for discovering and defending against threats across AI tools and coding agents.[4]
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: Not stated on its pages
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
  • G2: Not stated on its pages
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
From its own pages, Onyx Security sells mainly to security, governance, and AI teams that need control over AI agent adoption across the enterprise. Onyx Security describes a single platform for security, governance, and infrastructure teams. Onyx Security offers cloud, hybrid, or self-hosted options for organisations with sensitive data residency requirements. Onyx Security presents one console for AI agents and models across SaaS, cloud, endpoint, and code environments. Onyx Security names security, finance, and platform teams as the teams that share its usage, cost, and policy ledger.It describes plans for teams putting their first production AI into customers' hands and for companies running AI across teams and products with critical data and compliance requirements. Its pages say regulated and government deployments mostly use the VPC, on-premise, or air-gapped options on the Enterprise plan. Workloads it covers range from coding agents on employee laptops to cloud agents across any infra.
Last verified
October 19, 2026September 27, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Onyx Security and Operant AI are both filed under AI model and agent security.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Onyx Security's primary category is AI model and agent security; Operant AI's is AI firewalls and guardrails.
  • Onyx Security is also filed under AI governance, Workforce AI usage security and Non-human identity security.
  • Onyx Security lists AI Security and MCP Gateway. Operant AI lists Operant Semantic Firewall and Agent Protector.
  • Operant AI is headquartered in San Francisco, United States.
  • Operant AI is privately held.

What it sells: Onyx Security

What AI Security does[1][7]
Onyx provides the runtime and posture layer of the Onyx Secure AI Control Plane. Onyx inspects every prompt, tool call, and model response inline across browser AI, coding assistants, desktop AI agents, cloud workloads, and MCP servers. Onyx offers five enforcement actions: alert, block, mask, steer, or ask.
What MCP Gateway does[8]
The MCP Gateway governs the agent-to-tool surface. Every tool call an agent makes to an MCP server gets inspected and policy-enforced. MCP Gateway coverage spans the MCP ecosystem, including servers using dynamic client registration and popular servers like GitHub.

What it sells: Operant AI

What Operant Semantic Firewall does[1][7]
Operant Semantic Firewall holds an agent to its assigned purpose across the whole session, catching drift from manipulation or its own initiative. Operant can redact the sensitive part of an action and let the agent keep working within scope, instead of killing the workflow.
What Agent Protector does[1][5][6]
Agent Protector covers managed agents deployed through official channels and unmanaged agents running in cloud environments, SaaS platforms, and development tools. Agent Protector analyzes agent behavior patterns to identify and prevent security threats before they execute.

Questions about Onyx Security and Operant AI

What do Onyx Security and Operant AI sell?
Onyx Security sells AI Security and MCP Gateway. Operant AI sells Operant Semantic Firewall and Agent Protector.
Are Onyx Security and Operant AI in the same category?
They share AI model and agent security. Onyx Security's primary category is AI model and agent security and Operant AI's is AI firewalls and guardrails.
Where are Onyx Security and Operant AI headquartered?
Operant AI is headquartered in San Francisco, United States.
Who owns Onyx Security and Operant AI?
Operant AI is privately held.
Who are Onyx Security and Operant AI sold to?
From its own pages, Onyx Security sells mainly to security, governance, and AI teams that need control over AI agent adoption across the enterprise. It describes plans for teams putting their first production AI into customers' hands and for companies running AI across teams and products with critical data and compliance requirements.
What have Onyx Security and Operant AI announced recently?
July 29, 2026: Onyx Security announced a $113 million Series B funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. May 4, 2026: Operant AI launched Operant Endpoint Protector, a new addition to its AI Defense Platform for discovering and defending against threats across AI tools and coding agents.

About Onyx Security

Onyx Security sells a secure control plane for AI agents and models. Onyx gives security, governance, and AI teams control to protect, optimize, and measure AI agent adoption across the enterprise. Onyx was founded around a single goal: to control the most advanced forms of AI. Onyx describes its secure AI control plane as a single platform that serves security, governance, and infrastructure teams as they oversee how AI agents are used, ensure they are secure and compliant, and measure their effectiveness.[1][2]

Onyx says enterprises were deploying autonomous agents faster than they could see, govern, or control them. Onyx offers one console for every AI agent and model across SaaS, cloud, endpoint, and code. Onyx discovers sanctioned and shadow AI across the enterprise, with visibility into every prompt, response, and agent action. Onyx identifies every agent, MCP server, AI tool, copilot, and embedded AI surface continuously, across SaaS, cloud, endpoints, and code. Onyx combines directory scanning, native platform APIs, and behavioral signature learning for browser-based AI to keep the inventory current. Onyx records every prompt, model response, and tool call by name, argument, and result, with the reasoning context preserved across turns. Onyx correlates agent activity to the invoking user and the agent owner, and captures the identity used on each tool and MCP call. Onyx forwards alerts and their session records to Splunk and CrowdStrike NG-SIEM.[1][2][4][5][8]

Onyx provides the runtime and posture layer of the Onyx Secure AI Control Plane. Onyx inspects every prompt, tool call, and model response inline across browser AI, coding assistants, desktop AI agents, cloud workloads, and MCP servers. Onyx applies five enforcement actions: alert, block, mask, steer, or ask (human in-the-loop). Onyx evaluates every agent on deployment and continuously across its lifecycle. Onyx red teaming continuously attacks deployed agents, generating attack plans across reconnaissance, jailbreaking, and weaponization. Onyx identifies supply chain risks in agents, MCP servers, models, and AI assets.[4][6]

Onyx gives an agent its own identity, separate from the invoker, when multiple users delegate to the same agent across tools. Onyx lets teams sanction approved tools and control MCP server access. Onyx offers pre-populated policy templates aligned to industry regulations. Onyx helps teams meet security standards from MITRE, NIST, OWASP, and more.[4][7]

Onyx centralizes all AI traffic on a fully-managed, OSS AI gateway. Onyx routes across popular LLMs to automate failover, minimize latency, and balance load by task complexity and cost constraints. Onyx proxies all MCP traffic with an inline gateway, logs every request and response, and enforces guardrails. Onyx evaluates every tool call an agent makes to an MCP server against scope, identity, data class, and policy before the call lands.[4][8]

Onyx lets teams define AI adoption targets by department, use case, or tool category. Onyx shows total AI spend, avoidable costs, and optimization opportunities. Onyx correlates AI usage, cost, risk, and outcomes to the same activity record. The Onyx AI Gateway captures per-request cost metadata at runtime: cost, tokens, model, and identity context. The Onyx Guardian Agent is a supervisory AI that continuously works across the platform to identify risks and remediate issues.[2][4][9]

Onyx offers cloud, hybrid, or self-hosted options for sensitive data residency requirements. Onyx supports deployment with AWS VPC, Bedrock Gateway, and custom proxy configurations. Onyx offers 100+ pre-built integrations that connect to agent platforms, frontier model providers, SIEM, and cloud platforms. Onyx pulls identity context from Okta and Microsoft Entra, and endpoint management context from Intune, Jamf, and Tanium. Onyx integrates with Claude Enterprise through the Compliance API, pulling conversation content, uploaded files, project data, and activity logs into the Onyx control plane. Onyx integrates with the OpenAI Compliance API, ingesting ChatGPT Enterprise workspace activity. Onyx integrates with Amazon Bedrock Agents through Bedrock Agent configuration APIs, agent invocation logs delivered to S3, and CloudTrail data events. Onyx integrates with Microsoft Copilot Studio through the Microsoft Graph API. Onyx Security is SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified.[1][4][6][7][8][10][11][12][13]

Onyx Security on the record

Sources

Onyx Security full record

  1. [1]onyx.securityOnyx Security · onyx.security · undated page, accessed October 19, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]The Secure AI Control Plane for the Agentic Era | OnyxOnyx Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]About Onyx | The Team Behind the AI Control PlaneOnyx Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]One Platform to Discover and Control Every AI Agent | OnyxOnyx Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]AI Observability – Discover Every Agent & Session | OnyxOnyx Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]AI Agent Security | Block Prompt Injection in Real TimeOnyx Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]AI Governance Platform Built for the EU AI Act | OnyxOnyx Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]AI Orchestration – Governed Routing & Control | OnyxOnyx Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]AI ROI Platform – Prove Value & Control Costs | OnyxOnyx Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Secure Claude Enterprise with Onyx | Anthropic IntegrationOnyx Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Secure ChatGPT Enterprise with Onyx | OpenAI IntegrationOnyx Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Secure Amazon Bedrock Agents | Onyx IntegrationOnyx Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Copilot Studio Security – Discover, Govern & Control | OnyxOnyx Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Israeli cyber firm Onyx Security launches operations with $40 million funding round | ReutersReuters · published March 12, 2026 · Tier B
  15. [15]Onyx Security Raises $113M Series B to Control Advanced AI, Quadrupling Revenue since Stealth Launch Four Months AgoBusiness Wire · published July 29, 2026 · Tier A

Operant AI full record

  1. [1]Operant AI - Secure Your AIOperant AI · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Operant ai launches agent protector the first real time agentic security solution enabling safe ai agent innovation at scaleOperant AI via GlobeNewswire · globenewswire.com · published February 5, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Operant ai secures 10m series a to protect the modern cloud across apis applications and aiOperant AI via GlobeNewswire · globenewswire.com · published September 12, 2024 · Tier A
  4. [4]Operant AI Endpoint Protector secures AI agents and MCP toolsHelp Net Security · published May 4, 2026 · Tier B
  5. [5]Pricing - AI & Agent Security Platform | Operant AIOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Agent Protector: Real-Time AI Agent Security | OperantOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Operant Semantic Firewall | Govern AI Agents in Real TimeOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Operant MCP GatewayOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]AI GatekeeperOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]AI Application SecurityOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]API & Cloud Protector | Real-Time API Security | Operant AIOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Woodpecker: Open Source Red Teaming for AI, APIs & K8sOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]FAQsOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Start Your Free 7-Day Trial | Operant AI Security PlatformOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A

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