Company’s Innovation Labs will become a separate company.
Identity Digital, a company known for managing and operating domain name services, has separated its Innovation Labs initiative and launched it as a new, independent company called Known. The move formalizes work that began earlier this year within Identity Digital and is intended to accelerate development of agent identity solutions that can be adopted across the internet ecosystem.
Earlier this year, Identity Digital introduced Innovation Labs and described its first major effort, DNSid, as a form of “birth certificate for AI agents.” DNSid aims to provide a standardized, verifiable identity layer for automated agents using the Domain Name System (DNS) as a foundation. As automated agents take on more tasks online, from search and data aggregation to customer interactions, the need for robust identity and accountability mechanisms has become more pressing.
The decision to spin out the project into a standalone company reflects a strategic choice to broaden participation and foster open standards adoption. Known will focus on advancing DNSid as an open standard and building the practical tools and enterprise features required to bring agent accountability into production environments at scale. By separating governance and operations from a single domain company, the new company seeks to encourage wider industry engagement and collaboration.
Identity Digital’s CEO Akram Atallah has previously discussed DNSid and the broader rationale for agent identity work, noting the importance of ensuring that automated agents are identifiable and accountable when they act on behalf of people or organizations. Known is positioned to engage with multiple stakeholders—technology providers, enterprises, standards bodies, and platform operators—to drive interoperability and shared infrastructure that supports secure, trustworthy agent behavior online.
Maintaining independence from any single domain company is a core part of Known’s strategy. The new entity intends to convene participants from across the market and to develop specifications and implementations that any organization can adopt. The aim is to avoid perceived conflicts of interest and to foster a neutral environment where technical and governance decisions can be made with broad input.
Identity Digital will continue to support the initiative as an investor and by retaining a seat on Known’s board. Ethos Capital, which has also backed Identity Digital, will provide initial support for Known as it establishes its operations and pursues partnerships. This backing helps ensure continuity from the early Innovation Labs work while enabling the new company to pursue a wider, multi-stakeholder approach.
Known has named Allie Kline, who serves on Identity Digital’s board and is a partner at Ethos Capital, as interim CEO while the company conducts a search for a permanent chief executive. Kline’s interim leadership is intended to provide stability during the transition and to help lay the groundwork for the organization’s initial technical and business priorities.
The formation of Known underscores growing industry attention on how to manage the identity, provenance, and accountability of automated agents. Standards that leverage existing internet infrastructure such as DNS can offer an incremental, interoperable path to establishing trust in agent-driven interactions, while accompanying tooling and enterprise features will be required to make those standards practical for large organizations.
Known’s immediate focus will be twofold: continuing technical development and pushing for community adoption. On the technical side, this means refining the DNSid specification, producing reference implementations, and addressing security, privacy, and governance concerns that arise when connecting agent identities to domain-based infrastructure. On the adoption side, Known aims to engage with companies and organizations that can pilot and implement agent identity solutions, gathering feedback and use cases that will inform future refinements.
By launching as an independent company, Known hopes to accelerate the adoption of agent identity standards that are open, interoperable, and supported by a wide range of industry participants. The initiative reflects a broader trend toward building accountability and transparency into automated systems, ensuring that as agents become more capable, their actions remain traceable and governed by agreed-upon norms and technical controls.