About Formal

Formal's mission is to secure AGI. As AI systems grow more capable and autonomous, they need direct access to production databases, APIs, and infrastructure — and the security boundary between human intent and machine action is disappearing. Formal exists to enforce least privilege at the most granular level across every protocol, every identity, every query, so that when AGI arrives, the infrastructure layer is ready.

Our Story

Founded in San Francisco, Formal came out of stealth in November 2024 with $6.8M in seed funding led by Thrive Capital, with backing from Y Combinator, Abstract Ventures, and founders from Datadog, ClickHouse, Front, and Alan. C-level executives from Rippling, Plaid, Vanta, and Checkout.com also participated.

We started with a simple observation: security teams were stuck duct-taping together legacy tools and custom scripts to control access to their data infrastructure. Native cloud provider tooling wasn't enough. Internal solutions didn't scale. And every new database, API, or AI integration made the problem worse.

So we built a single stateless binary that understands 15+ wire protocols natively — Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Snowflake, SSH, Kubernetes, HTTP, MCP, and more. One proxy to authenticate, evaluate policies, mask data, and audit every query. Deployed in the customer's VPC. Zero application changes.

What We Believe

Protocol-native, not network-level

Generic network proxies can't rewrite SQL queries, mask MongoDB fields, or filter MCP tool calls. We parse each wire protocol to enable decisions at the query level.

Security should not slow you down

Sub-10ms overhead. Zero developer friction. Formal is invisible to the engineers using it — that's by design.

One proxy to rule them all

No more stitching together 5 tools for 5 protocols. A single binary handles databases, SSH, Kubernetes, HTTP APIs, and AI agents.

Deployed in your VPC

Your data never leaves your infrastructure. No SaaS data exfiltration risk. Forensic-grade audit trails that you own.

Backed By

  • Thrive Capital Lead
  • Y Combinator
  • Abstract Ventures
  • Definition Capital
  • Founders from Datadog, ClickHouse, Front, Alan
  • Executives from Rippling, Plaid, Vanta, Checkout.com

Join Us

We're hiring engineers and go-to-market leaders in San Francisco. If you want to build the infrastructure layer that secures every packet flowing through the modern enterprise, we'd love to hear from you.

See open roles →