Akamai to Buy LayerX for $205M to Expand AI Browser Security

Agentic AI , Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning , Endpoint Security Akamai to Buy LayerX for $205M to Expand AI Browser Security Akamai Says Startup LayerX's Browser Telemetry Will Strengthen Access Decisions Michael Novinson (MichaelNovinson) • May 14, 2026     Credit Eligible Get Permission Mani Sundaram, EVP, Security Technology Group, Akamai; and Or Eshed, CEO, LayerX (Image: LayerX) Akamai plans to purchase a browser security startup led by a former Check Point analyst for $205 million to provide visibility and control for user interactions. See Also: Modernizing at Speed: Scaling AI and Apps Without New Silos The Boston-area cybersecurity and cloud computing vendor said its proposed acquisition of Tel Aviv, Israel-based LayerX will complement Akamai's zero trust network architecture and segmentation products, which secure the downstream access and workload communication layers, said Mani Sundaram, executive vice president of the security technology group at Akamai. The browser layer is where employees are actively interacting with artificial intelligence tools and cloud apps. "The secure browser way of actually looking at things, right at the source of when a user is actually interacting with an application, is the right way," Sundaram told ISMG. "It's pre decryption, and it doesn't break applications. That's why this all fits together for us." LayerX, founded in 2021, employs 109 people and has raised $45 million across two rounds of outside funding, having most recently completed an $11 million Series A extension led by Jump Capital in April 2025. The company has been led since its inception by Or Eshed, who spent 19 months as a threat intelligence analyst at Check Point Software and six years in the Israel Defence Forces focused on intel (see: Agentic AI Ushers in New Era for API Security). Why Browsers Are the Focal Point for AI Interactions Many organizations now face uncertainty around what data users are uploading into AI systems, how employees are interacting with those tools and whether confidential enterprise information could be exposed externally through AI prompts and workflows, Sundaram said. Eshed said customers began discussing AI-related use cases and governance challenges as early as 2023 and 2024. "I've had a lot of conversations with CISOs, who are very concerned about what gets exfiltrated to these generative AI tools," Sundaram said. "How are their employees engaging with AI? How are they consuming AI? What is the risk for CISOs?" Browsers have effectively become the central operating environment for AI interactions, Eshed said, with users increasingly accessing AI systems, copilots, AI agents and SaaS apps directly through the browser. Some 80% to 90% of user-to-agent activity now occurs inside browser environments, making browsers the most strategic place to apply visibility, policy enforcement and behavioral monitoring. "For the agentic era, we should assume that we only see a rise in the number of agents that are working on behalf of the user, whether on the device or in the cloud, and the browser is the best place to secure this," Eshed told ISMG. Organizations are beginning to encounter AI agents that can create files, establish service accounts, interact with repositories and transfer data without the natural behavioral limitations humans exhibit. These agents create entirely new categories of security challenges because many existing security controls were designed around predictable human behavior rather than autonomous workflows. "An agent is treating data differently, is doing things differently, is very creative, sometimes in ways that are surprising or shocking," Eshed said. "So, understanding what those agents are doing in the user space is becoming a critical piece of enterprise security." How Browser Security Complements ZTNA, Microsegmentation Browser security complements ZTNA by supplying additional contextual signals about user behavior and session activity, and can observe authentication state, user activity patterns and risky actions taking place inside applications, Sundaram said. Those signals can feed into Akamai's access control engine to make more granular decisions about whether access should be allowed, restricted or terminated. "Even if a company has unlimited budget, it wouldn't take an unlimited number of security tools," Eshed said. "It needs to be something which is well justified with ROI, and AI is becoming the must-have for every platform today." Browser security governs the initial user interaction layer at the endpoint, Sundaram said, while ZTNA controls north-south access between users and applications, and microsegmentation protects east-west traffic between workloads, servers and databases. Together, he said those technologies help Akamai secure the full chain of communication from endpoint to application to backend infrastructure. "The browser does a lot of things," Sundaram said. "It says, 'Is the user authenticated inside the application? What kind of content is the user doing? In what order? What are the attributes of the user that is doing stuff with the browser?' And all of those are actually passed on to ZTNA to have much finer control over what the user is doing." Akamai plans to continue selling LayerX as a standalone offering while building tighter integrations into its broader enterprise security platform. Over time, Akamai expects to combine browser security, ZTNA, segmentation and AI governance into a unified security suite. Sundaram said key success metrics will include account penetration, ARR growth and increased adoption of bundled platform offerings. "AI is changing everything right now, and we really want to be one of the leaders in providing security in a post-AI world," Sundaram said. "For every CISO that I've talked with, including our own, one of the biggest worries is all the different ways in which enterprises using AI could be susceptible to security issues or challenges."