Barrett Lyon has spent much of his career fixing problems with the internet. Now, he thinks the bigger task is changing the network itself.
The longtime cybersecurity founder, whose past companies have been acquired by Akamai, Tata Communications, Fortinet and F5, has launched Miami-based doxx.net into open beta with a new pitch: give people and their AI agents their own private networks, without relying on the usual collection of servers and intermediaries sitting between them.
Investors are buying into that vision. doxx.net announced a $38 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Miami-based ANIMO Ventures and Focal.vc.
AI agents are starting to browse websites, access services and take actions for users. That means many of the security and privacy issues humans already face online could become more important when software is operating with access to their accounts and data.
doxx.net calls its approach “Agentic Defined Networking,” or ADN. In practice, it gives users and their agents a private network where they can communicate with one another, transfer files, browse and configure parts of the network itself.
The company said its network has its own IP space, DNS root, certificate authority and bare-metal servers. Its peer-to-peer communications system also allows users to make calls, video chat, send messages and transfer files directly between devices rather than routing the communication through a central communications server.
Lyon said one of the early tests brought home what that infrastructure could mean.
“Have you ever had your agents configure your network, lease public IP addresses, and set up your security policy, to then discover you can call your friends through your own private network with no one in the middle? No record of the call? No phone company involved, where your phone is also the server?” Lyon shared in a statement. “That was our first freedom call.”
For Lyon, doxx.net follows more than two decades spent deep in the plumbing of the internet. He founded Prolexic, an early company focused on defending businesses against distributed denial-of-service attacks, which Akamai later acquired. He subsequently helped build content delivery company BitGravity, acquired by Tata Communications, as well as XDN and Defense.Net, acquired by Fortinet and F5, respectively.
His latest company is taking aim at another basic part of how the internet works: trust.
Most privacy products still require users to trust someone else’s infrastructure. doxx.net’s argument is that privacy should instead come from how the network is built.
“The industry sells privacy as a feature while routing your traffic through rented infrastructure they don’t own and can’t verify,” Lyon commented. “We physically built something different: a platform where privacy comes from the architecture itself, not a policy document.”
That approach extends to AI agents. Agents on the platform can have their own network identities and private channels, while a network API with native MCP support allows them to configure infrastructure. DNS-level security is designed to stop agents from reaching known or suspected phishing and malware destinations while acting for users.
The company said it has blocked more than 38 million threats since beginning its closed beta in December 2025.
“The internet was never designed for privacy,” asserted Andreessen Horowitz partner Joel De La Garza. “doxx.net has built a one-stop privacy stack from first principles, delivering truly private security and communications capabilities, so humans and AI agents can run on a network that is private by architecture, not by marketing promise.”
AMINO Ventures Founder and General Partner Nico Berardi shared his view: “Doxx is building something meaningful: what the internet should have been. Barrett is a legend in the space and a true wunderkind of a technologist. I’ve known Nicolai since his Miami Angels days, and his track record in infrastructure is unique. Add Joel and Martin Casado from a16z — arguably the leading infrastructure investors of this cycle — and you have something pretty special.”
Berardi adds: “The fact that a company this sophisticated is being built here is a testament to just how far Miami tech has come.”
So what’s it like to build this platform in Miami? “Miami, as a founder and builder, is not the party place people think about,” Lyon told Refresh Miami. “It’s a high quality of life that allows me to focus, design and think.”
Lyon continued: “As an artist, the colors and what we have been building are reflected in our product, which gives people a completely different way to experience the Internet on their own terms.”
The platform is now available in open beta, with native apps for iOS, macOS and Android and support for Windows and Linux. Users can start without providing an email address, phone number, username or password.
There is a certain symmetry to Lyon’s latest project. The founder who spent years building companies to defend the existing internet is now asking what the network should look like when some of its most active users may no longer be human.
Nancy Dahlberg contributed to this report.
PICTURED ABOVE: Barrett Lyon, founder and CEO (left), and Nicolai Bezsonoff, COO (right).
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
- It’s a deal, #MiamiTech! Carnegie Mellon to open a Wynwood campus
- TrustedRouter lands $1.25M to build a private gateway to AI
- Inside ClawCon Miami, where AI agents took over the dance floor
- AI was supposed to kill the call center. Horatio has 3,500 reasons to disagree.
- Comp AI turns compliance headaches into a $34M Series A
- doxx.net raises $38M to put AI agents on a shorter leash – October 1, 2026
- Jeeves raises $110M to take its stablecoin play global – September 30, 2026
- It’s a deal, #MiamiTech! Carnegie Mellon to open a Wynwood campus – September 30, 2026
