Known Systems AI spins out of Identity Digital to make AI agents accountable to their owners
SiliconANGLE Mike Wheatley
Identity Digital is spinning out Known Systems AI to give AI agents a persistent identity. The pitch: make them accountable across companies instead of trapped inside one system.
Based on reporting by SiliconANGLE, Mike Wheatley — read the original for the full story.
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Identity Digital is turning part of its AI agent identity work into a new company called Known Systems AI. The idea is simple enough to fit on a slide and messy enough to matter: give AI agents a persistent identity that follows them across platforms, so somebody can actually be held responsible when they act on their own.
That effort started earlier this year inside Identity Digital’s Innovation Labs. The team later released DNSid, an open framework the company describes as a kind of birth certificate for AI agents. It uses the Domain Name System, public key infrastructure and an immutable blockchain ledger, with the goal of making accountability interoperable across organizational boundaries.
This is a direct answer to a problem that is already showing up in the wild. Companies and individuals are using AI agents to move information, initiate financial transactions and operate with very little human involvement. Traditional identity and access tools can tell a system what an agent may do inside one environment, but they do not solve the harder question of who is responsible once that agent starts moving across different platforms.
The catch is scale. Agents can set up bilateral trust relationships, but that gets clumsy fast when businesses are running thousands of them and trying to deal with multiple third parties. Identity Digital says the answer is a shared accountability layer that works across platforms and organizations, and Known will now try to push DNSid as an open standard while building tools for enterprises.
The spinout still keeps one foot in the old company. Identity Digital remains a major investor and gets a board seat, while Ethos Capital, its primary owner, is backing the new business too. Ethos partner Allie Kline is serving as interim CEO while the company searches for a permanent leader. Identity Digital CEO Akram Atallah said the work had outgrown its parent and needed independence to get wider adoption.
Known says it has already filed an Internet-Draft with the Internet Engineering Task Force, worked with the Linux Foundation through the Agentic AI Foundation and LF Decentralized Trust, and built enterprise and policy relationships along the way. The message is clear: AI agents are no longer just chat toys, and the people who make them want a system that can follow them when the robots leave the room.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the right fight to pick. Agents that can move money and information need a clear paper trail, and the industry’s favorite trick of shipping first and thinking later is getting old. Open standards are the only way this doesn’t turn into a private toll booth dressed up as trust.
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