GLEIPNIR

When an AI agent acts for a company, who said it could?

Your agent places an order with a supplier. The supplier can't tell if anyone at your company approved it. Gleipnir gives the agent a signed permission, which we call a mandate, that the supplier can check in a second.

Tell us where your agent got blocked See how it works

It's two of us in Vienna and it's early. There is nothing to buy yet. Right now we're talking to teams whose agents already deal with other companies.

Mandate check Illustration with made-up data
company
Nordwind Supply GmbH (fictional)
issued by
A. Berger, managing director, signs alone
agent
procurement-agent-07
may
place purchase orders
limit
EUR 50,000 per order
expires
31 Dec 2026
status
active

The agent contacts a supplier. Pick what it asks for:

    This runs in your browser to show the idea. It is not connected to a live service.

    AI agents already order, book and pay. The company on the other end can't see who approved it.

    Inside your company you decide what an agent can touch. Outside you don't. When the agent emails a supplier or calls a bank, all they get is a message.

    They can't tell if someone who is allowed to sign for your company approved it. They can't tell if the amount is fine, or if the approval was pulled yesterday.

    So some block the agent and ask for a human. Others say yes, and argue about who pays when it goes wrong.

    • Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024

      Air Canada's website chatbot gave a customer wrong information. A Canadian tribunal made the airline pay. What your bot says, you said.

    • Arup, Hong Kong, 2024

      An employee sent about USD 25 million after a video call with deepfakes of senior colleagues. Looking like the boss and being the boss are different things.

    • Agent payments, since 2025

      Card networks and big platforms now publish formats for payments made by agents. For orders, contracts and everything else there is nothing like it yet.

    What the other side needs to know

    Five things. Existing tools cover parts of the first three. We spend most of our time on the last two.

    1. Which agent is this?

      The agent proves it with its own key, so a copied mandate is useless to anyone else.

    2. Which company is it working for?

      A real registered company, not a name in an email footer.

    3. What is it allowed to do?

      What kind of action, up to how much, until when. And whether that still stands today.

    4. Was the person who approved it allowed to?

      Not everyone at a company can sign for it. Some directors sign alone, some need a second signature, some only up to an amount. Approval from the wrong person counts for nothing.

    5. Can you prove it later?

      Both sides get a signed record of what was checked and when. Handy when an auditor, an insurer or a court asks.

    How it works

    We're building this now. Here is the plan, step by step.

    1. Approve

      Someone who can sign for the company gives the agent a mandate: what it may do, the limit, the end date. If the company needs two signatures, two people approve.

    2. Guard

      A small library runs next to the agent. Anything outside the mandate is stopped before it leaves.

    3. Send

      The agent attaches the mandate to its request and signs it.

    4. Check

      The other side runs one check: is it real, is it still valid, is it within the limit, did the right person approve it.

    5. Record

      Both sides keep a signed receipt that can't be edited afterwards.

    Already have a payment mandate from a card network? The plan is to accept it as input, not to replace it.

    The check is the same in every country. Only the source of truth changes: a company register in one place, a digital company ID in another.

    Who can sign for a company is a legal question. We turn the answer into code.

    The rules sit in laws, company registers and company statutes. Registers often write them as one plain sentence.

    Tatiana rewrites those sentences as rules a program can run. We did this before for Austrian building permits, and learned that most of a legal rule is its exceptions.

    A rule in code gives the same answer every time, in milliseconds, and points to where it came from.

    # register entry: "represented jointly by two
# managing directors, or by one together with
# an authorised officer"

rule joint_representation
  valid if
    count(signers where role = director) >= 2
    or (
      count(signers where role = director) >= 1
      and count(signers where role = officer) >= 1
    )
  source register_entry.representation

    A simplified example to show the idea.

    Who we are

    Ivan Voloshyn

    Co-founder, CEO and engineering

    Ivan writes the code, including the cryptography. He studies Business Informatics at the University of Vienna. Before this he co-founded Planara, software that checked Austrian building permit applications, and ran online shops.

    Ivan on LinkedIn

    Tatiana Khokhlova

    Co-founder, legal engineering

    Tatiana turns legal rules into code. She trained in international law. At Planara she wrote the full set of rules the software checked against.

    Tatiana on LinkedIn

    We are part of u:seed, the startup programme of the University of Vienna, 2026/27.

    Questions people ask

    • What is Gleipnir?

      Gleipnir is software, currently in development, that gives an AI agent a signed permission from its company. We call that permission a mandate. Another company can check it to see who approved the agent's action, up to what amount and until when, before it accepts an order, a payment or a commitment.

    • What is a mandate for an AI agent?

      A signed record that says which person authorised which agent, for which company, to do what, up to what amount and until when. The person who gave it can take it back at any time.

    • How is this different from agent identity or access control?

      Identity tells you which agent this is. Access control decides what the agent can touch inside its own company. A mandate tells a different company that someone who is allowed to sign approved this specific kind of action.

    • Can I use Gleipnir today?

      Not yet. We are early and there is nothing to buy. We are talking to teams whose agents already deal with other companies, and to the companies that receive those requests. Write to ivan.voloshyn@getgleipnir.com.

    • Who is behind Gleipnir?

      Ivan Voloshyn (CEO and engineering) and Tatiana Khokhlova (legal engineering), based in Vienna, Austria. Gleipnir is part of u:seed, the startup programme of the University of Vienna.

    Did another company ever say no to your agent?

    We'd like to hear what happened. 20 minutes on a call, and in return we'll share what other teams told us.

    ivan.voloshyn@getgleipnir.com

    You build agents that deal with other companies

    Procurement, sales, voice, collections. Where do people stop your agent and ask for a human?

    You receive requests from agents

    Vendor onboarding, accounts payable, fraud, legal. What would you need to see before saying yes?

    You work on standards

    Agent payments, company identity, wallets. We want to fit into what already exists.