Neal is a serial founder and product leader with deep expertise in AI security. Prior to founding Manifold, Neal was the co-creator of LLM Guard, and co-founder of Laiyer AI, acquired by Protect AI, later acquired by Palo Alto Networks. While securing Fortune 500 AI deployments at scale, Neal identified a fundamental limitation: as organizations moved from chatbots to autonomous agents, first-generation AI security tools, focused on LLM inference, proved incapable of detecting threats at the point of execution: where agents orchestrate, invoke tools, and take action. Today, that's largely coding agents on developer laptops. Tomorrow, autonomous agents on every employee's device. Recognizing the urgency, Neal co-founded Manifold with Oleksandr Yaremchuk to build the first AI Detection and Response platform purpose-built for the agentic enterprise.
Articles
- Product
Blocking Is the Only Answer Most Security Tools Have. "Ask" Lets the Developer Decide.
Sep 23, 2026
Neal SwaelensCEO & Co-Founder
- News
- Product
AI Agents Moved Into the Browser, Make Sure Your Governance Follows
Sep 16, 2026- Neal SwaelensCEO & Co-Founder
- News
Joe Sullivan Joins Manifold's Board
Sep 9, 2026- Neal SwaelensCEO & Co-Founder
- Thought Leadership
What the AI Village Disasters Reveal About Runtime Security
Jun 1, 2026- Neal SwaelensCEO & Co-Founder
- Product
Manifold Adds MCP Servers to Manifest Supply Chain Intelligence
May 12, 2026
Oleksandr YaremchukCTO & Co-Founder- Neal SwaelensCEO & Co-Founder
- Product
Introducing Manifest: Supply Chain Intelligence for the AI Agent Ecosystem
Apr 14, 2026- Oleksandr YaremchukCTO & Co-Founder
- Neal SwaelensCEO & Co-Founder
- Research
Non-Adversarial Agent Harm: The Overlooked Insider Threat
Apr 12, 2026- Neal SwaelensCEO & Co-Founder
- Research
Why Your EDR Has No Clue What Your Agents Are Up To
Apr 7, 2026
Nate DemuthChief Architect- Neal SwaelensCEO & Co-Founder
- Research
Why AI Guardrails Can’t Secure Your Agents: The Classification Fallacy
Mar 31, 2026- Neal SwaelensCEO & Co-Founder
- Oleksandr YaremchukCTO & Co-Founder
- Research
The Sandbox Illusion: How Do You Isolate Agents That Think Outside the Box?
Mar 18, 2026- Neal SwaelensCEO & Co-Founder
- Oleksandr YaremchukCTO & Co-Founder