Kevan Dodhia
| Kevan Dodhia | |
| Nationality | Kenyan-American |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Alter |
| Known for | Co-founding Alter, a zero-trust identity and access control platform for AI agents |
| Education | Carnegie Mellon University (electrical and computer engineering, 2019) |
Kevan Dodhia is a software engineer and entrepreneur who is the co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of Alter, a startup building a zero-trust authorization and access control platform for AI agents. Alter was part of Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch.[1]
Early life and education
Dodhia grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, before moving to the United States to attend Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied electrical and computer engineering, graduating in 2019.[2] During his time at Carnegie Mellon, he worked as a research programmer, developing a prediction program using a Naïve Bayes classifier to classify intercepted traffic data and building a multi-layer dynamic web labeling form using Node.js and JavaScript on AWS.
Career
After graduating, Dodhia joined Xcalar, a startup focused on distributed analytics and cloud-scale big data application development, where he worked as a software engineer. He had previously interned at the company.[3]
In 2020, Dodhia co-founded Compute.AI, where he helped build a high-performance SQL compute engine that reportedly ran five times faster than Apache Spark on AWS EMR. The technology developed at Compute.AI was subsequently acquired.[4]
In 2025, Dodhia co-founded Alter with Srikar Dandamuraju. The company provides a centralized zero-trust authorization platform designed to secure AI agent workflows. Alter addresses the problem of AI agents receiving overly broad credentials by offering fine-grained, real-time role-based access control (RBAC), automatic OAuth token management for external API calls, and built-in compliance guardrails that prevent sensitive data leaks across large language model calls, tool inputs, and outputs. The platform also provides tamper-proof audit trails for agent interactions.[5]
Alter was accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch. In September 2025, the Indian venture capital firm DeVC announced investments in Alter along with another YC-backed startup.[6]
References
- ↑ "Alter: Secure access control and authorization platform for agent workflows". 'Y Combinator}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "From Nairobi to YC: Kevan Dodhia on Building the Security Backbone for AI Agents". 'The Silicon Review}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "From Nairobi to YC: Kevan Dodhia on Building the Security Backbone for AI Agents". 'The Silicon Review}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "Kevan Dodhia's Builder Journey to Creating the New Policy Layer for AI Agents". 'HackerNoon}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "Alter". 'Alter}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "DeVC invests in 2 US-based YC-backed startups: Alter AI, Frizzle". 'Venture Intelligence}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.