Zenity Alternative - Runtime Enforcement You Self-Serve
Zenity raised a 125 million Series C on August 3, 2026 and is the best-funded independent company in this market. Agentshield is the alternative for teams that want to put a runtime control plane in front of one agent, self-serve, this week.
Direct answer
A Zenity alternative is an AI agent security tool for teams that want runtime enforcement without an enterprise-wide governance rollout. Agentshield is a self-serve control plane that blocks prompt injection, enforces tool and data permissions, gates destructive actions for human approval, and writes an immutable audit trail, dropping in front of any agent framework or model with prices on the page. Zenity is the stronger fit when the goal is discovering and governing agents across a whole organization, and it is now the better-resourced option by a wide margin: it raised a 125 million Series C in August 2026, employs more than 230 people, and sells mainly to Fortune 500 and Global 2000 buyers. Choose on scope and rollout model, not on which one enforces, because both do.
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Where Zenity is strong
Zenity is a purpose-built AI agent security and governance platform covering an entire enterprise, from SaaS copilots to homegrown agents to endpoints. It is strong at discovering shadow agents, inventorying ownership and permissions, and giving a CISO org-wide posture. Gartner published a report titled "AI Vendor Race: Zenity Is the Company to Beat in AI Agent Governance" in April 2026. On August 3, 2026 it announced a 125 million Series C led by Norwest, bringing total funding to roughly 180 million, and in its own funding announcement it describes the platform as "deterministically allowing, modifying or blocking an action before it occurs by understanding an agent's intent and distinguishing legitimate work from behavior that has been manipulated, compromised or falls outside its intended purpose." That last point matters for an honest comparison: Zenity is not a detection-only product, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling against a version of it that no longer exists.
Where Agentshield is the alternative
Agentshield is not an enterprise-wide discovery and governance suite, and after Zenity's Series C it is not going to out-fund one either. The wedge is scope and rollout. Agentshield is the runtime control plane a developer drops in front of one agent to block prompt injection, enforce least-privilege tool and data permissions, gate high-risk actions for a human, and keep an immutable audit trail. It is stack-neutral, self-serve, and priced on the page, so a product team can be enforcing in an afternoon without a governance program, a procurement cycle, or a security org to run it.
Side by side
Agentshield vs Zenity, honestly.
| Dimension | Agentshield | Zenity |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Enforce policy in the live action path of an agent. | Discover, inventory, and govern agents across the enterprise, with enforcement on top. |
| Shadow-agent discovery | Not a discovery or CASB-style tool. | Strong discovery of shadow agents across SaaS, cloud, and endpoints. Clear win for them. |
| Runtime enforcement | Blocks injection, denies tool calls, gates actions inline. | Also enforces. States it deterministically allows, modifies or blocks agent actions by understanding intent. |
| Human approval gates | Built-in gates for refunds, deletes, and sends. | Enforcement is intent-based rather than approval-workflow centered. |
| Buyer and rollout | Developer, self-serve, prices on the page. | Security org, enterprise program, sales-led. No public pricing. |
Comparison reflects our understanding of publicly available information and is meant to be fair. Vendors evolve; verify the latest before deciding.
Governing every agent versus guarding one agent
Zenity and Agentshield both live at agent runtime, but they answer different questions. Zenity answers, what AI agents exist across my company, who owns them, what can they touch, and are any of them shadow agents nobody approved. That org-wide discovery and governance is genuinely its strength, and for a large enterprise trying to get its arms around sprawling copilot and agent usage, it is a strong choice. Gartner published a report in April 2026 titled "AI Vendor Race: Zenity Is the Company to Beat in AI Agent Governance."
Agentshield answers a narrower, deeper question: for this agent I am shipping, how do I make sure it cannot be hijacked by a prompt injection, cannot call a tool it should not, and cannot take an irreversible action without a human. It is the inline firewall and permission layer around one workload, not a program that inventories the whole estate.
If you need both, they are complementary: govern discovery and posture at the org level, and put a hard runtime control plane around the agents that actually move money or change records.
Zenity after the August 2026 Series C: what changed
We update this page when the facts move, and they moved a lot this month. On August 3, 2026 Zenity announced a 125 million Series C led by Norwest, with Qumra Capital, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Hitachi Ventures, LG Technology Ventures, Vertex Ventures, Third Point Ventures, DTCP and Intel Capital participating. That takes total funding to roughly 180 million and makes Zenity the best-capitalized independent company left in agent security, at a moment when most of its peers have been acquired.
| Fact | Detail | Why it matters to a buyer |
|---|---|---|
| Series C | 125 million, led by Norwest, announced August 3, 2026. Total funding roughly 180 million | Vendor-viability risk is low. If your procurement process weights whether a vendor will exist in three years, this is a strong answer |
| Scale | More than 230 employees globally. The company states revenue has tripled annually for the past two years | There is a real support and services organization behind the product. Growth claims are the company's own and are not independently audited |
| Analyst position | Gartner report, April 2026: "AI Vendor Race: Zenity Is the Company to Beat in AI Agent Governance" | If your evaluation requires analyst coverage, Zenity clears that bar and we do not. Say so in your internal writeup |
| Enforcement model | Zenity's own words: it works by "deterministically allowing, modifying or blocking an action before it occurs by understanding an agent's intent" | Do not evaluate Zenity as a detection-only tool. It enforces. The real difference from us is scope and rollout, not whether an action gets blocked |
| Coverage | Stated coverage across Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise, Gemini, Claude, and custom systems on AWS Bedrock and Google Vertex AI | Broad commercial-copilot coverage is a genuine strength if your problem is governing vendor copilots rather than agents your own team builds |
The consolidation context is worth holding alongside this. Lakera went to Check Point, Prompt Security to SentinelOne, Robust Intelligence into Cisco AI Defense, CalypsoAI to F5, and Aim Security to Cato Networks. Zenity and Lasso Security are the two meaningful independents left, and Zenity just raised more than Lasso has raised in total. If you want the full map of who owns what, it is on the AI agent security alternatives hub.
Why teams pick Agentshield instead
The most common reason is speed and fit. A product team shipping an agent next week does not want to stand up an enterprise governance program to protect one workload. Agentshield is self-serve with transparent pricing, drops in front of any framework or model, and is enforcing in an afternoon. You get a prompt-injection firewall, least-privilege tool and data permissions, human-approval gates, monitoring, and an immutable audit trail as one product.
The second reason is where the buying decision sits. Zenity sells to a security organization running an enterprise program, and its customer base is primarily Fortune 500 and Global 2000. If you are a fifteen-person product team with an agent that issues refunds, you are not that buyer, and a sales-led evaluation with no public pricing is a poor match for the size of the problem you are solving.
Where we would not argue: if your problem is that nobody knows how many copilots and agents exist across a 20,000-person company, we do not solve that and Zenity does. Discovery is a different product. Buy the one that matches the question you are actually being asked.
FAQ
Common questions.
What does Zenity do?
Zenity is a security and governance platform purpose-built for AI agents across the enterprise. It discovers and inventories agents across SaaS, cloud, and endpoints, surfaces shadow agents, manages posture and policy, and monitors runtime behavior to flag prompt injection, data leaks, and over-permissioned actions. It is strongest as an org-wide governance layer.
What is the difference between Agentshield and Zenity?
Scope and posture. Zenity focuses on discovering and governing agents across an entire organization. Agentshield focuses on enforcing policy in the live action path of a specific agent: blocking injection, denying out-of-policy tool calls, gating high-risk actions for human approval, and keeping an immutable audit trail. Agentshield is self-serve and developer-first; Zenity is an enterprise governance program.
Is there a self-serve alternative to Zenity?
Yes. Agentshield is self-serve with published pricing, so a team can deploy a runtime firewall in front of an agent without an enterprise governance rollout or a sales cycle. It enforces least-privilege tool and data permissions, blocks prompt injection, gates destructive actions, and writes an immutable audit trail across any agent stack.
Do I need Zenity and Agentshield?
They can complement each other. Use Zenity to discover and govern agents across the organization and manage posture at scale. Use Agentshield as the hard runtime control plane around the specific agents that take real actions, so those workloads have inline enforcement, approval gates, and an audit trail regardless of the broader governance program.
How much funding has Zenity raised?
Roughly 180 million in total. Zenity announced a 125 million Series C on August 3, 2026, led by Norwest, with Qumra Capital, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Hitachi Ventures, LG Technology Ventures, Vertex Ventures, Third Point Ventures, DTCP and Intel Capital participating. That makes it the best-funded independent company remaining in AI agent security.
Has Zenity been acquired?
No. Zenity is independent as of August 2026 and just raised a 125 million Series C to stay that way. It is one of only two significant independents left in this market alongside Lasso Security, after Lakera went to Check Point, Prompt Security to SentinelOne, Robust Intelligence into Cisco, CalypsoAI to F5, and Aim Security to Cato Networks.
Does Zenity do runtime enforcement or just governance?
Both, and it is worth being accurate about this. Zenity describes its platform as deterministically allowing, modifying or blocking agent actions by understanding intent, which is enforcement, not just detection. Older comparisons that frame Zenity as governance-only are out of date. The genuine difference from Agentshield is scope and rollout model rather than whether actions get blocked.