Identity Digital spins out agentic effort, now called Known

In terms of leadership, Known has appointed Allie Kline as its interim CEO. Kline is a seasoned executive and a partner at Ethos Capital, and she currently serves as a member of the board of directors for Identity Digital. Her appointment is intended to provide a steady hand during the initial transition period as the company searches for a permanent Chief Executive Officer. Kline’s background in brand building and corporate strategy is expected to be instrumental as Known begins the process of marketing its identity solutions to a global audience of tech firms and enterprises. The search for a permanent leader will focus on finding an individual capable of bridging the gap between deep technical infrastructure and the complex regulatory and security needs of the modern enterprise.

The move comes at a time when the broader technology community is increasingly concerned with the "black box" nature of autonomous AI. While much of the public discourse has focused on the large language models themselves, the industry is now turning its attention to the "agents" that use these models to navigate the web. These agents are designed to book travel, manage calendars, execute financial trades, and interact with APIs. However, most web protocols were designed for human-to-machine interaction, not machine-to-machine. This creates a friction point where servers often cannot distinguish between a legitimate AI agent working for a verified user and a malicious bot.

Known’s mission is to resolve this friction by providing a cryptographic link between an agent and its owner, rooted in the DNS. This approach allows for a "chain of trust" that can be audited and verified. For an enterprise, this means they can set policies that only allow agents with a valid DNSid from a trusted domain to access certain data or perform specific actions. It brings a level of governance to the AI space that has been largely absent during the initial gold rush of generative AI development.

The concept of using the DNS for identity is not entirely new, but applying it specifically to the lifecycle of an AI agent represents a novel application of classic internet infrastructure. During his appearance on the Domain Name Wire Podcast earlier this year, Akram Atallah detailed how DNSid could function as a persistent identifier. Unlike temporary session tokens, a DNS-based identity can follow an agent throughout its operational life, providing a consistent record of activity. This is particularly important for accountability; if an agent performs an unauthorized action, the DNSid allows the affected party to trace the responsibility back to the entity that registered and authorized the agent.