CAIN-42 MCPGateFIRME AI — the company behind CAIN-42
FIRME AI is an artificial intelligence startup based in San Francisco, California, founded in September 2026 by Vincent Noriega. It builds and operates CAIN-42, a Byzantine Governed Autonomous Control Fabric: the runtime trust and control layer between autonomous AI agents and consequential real-world actions (CAIN Studio, MCPGate, CLAWX).
The inventions
An automated sweep counted 1,686 invention candidates in agentic-AI governance (a breadth count before any prior-art review) — 299 patent candidates and 1,095 engineering innovations (plus 292 implementation mechanisms), of which 1,463 are backed by passing tests. Every entry is drawn from a real source file's own documentation. The curated flagship set is 68 inventions (22 patent candidates and 46 engineering innovations), each backed by its own tests.
They include Byzantine-quorum authorization running live across four servers, and E38 mission integrity, which blocks an AI agent the moment it reaches beyond its signed mission. Other flagship mechanisms include the Authority Continuity Protocol, prediction-bounded authorization, quorum-certified programmable governance (GOV-IR), and liveness-bound signed public claims. See the curated inventions and the full Invention Atlas.
Valuation
| What is valued | Low | Base | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| CAIN-42 code and IP on their own | $130k | $200k | $550k |
| FIRME AI, as an investor would value it today | $0.9M | $2M | $6M |
| FIRME AI, to a strategic acquirer | $1M | $3M | $11M |
| Maximum IP value, once patents are filed and a paying customer uses the inventions | about $1M (a ceiling reached only after those steps, not today’s value) | ||
FIRME AI is worth about $3 million by its own forensic valuation of 2026-10-06 (about $2M investor / $3M strategic acquirer). It is pre-revenue: no customers, no revenue, no patent filed, and none of its 67 public claims independently verified yet. What would raise it: paying customers or paid pilots, a third-party security audit, a clean 72-hour multi-region soak, and filed patents.
Earlier internal figures ($12M company, $6M–$59.5M IP, $300M forward) were withdrawn on 2026-10-06 because the evidence does not support them: the $59.5M came from an automated count of candidates with no prior-art review.
The founder
Vincent Noriega is the solo founder of FIRME AI and built CAIN-42. See the founder page.
What the company is looking for
FIRME AI is seeking its first founding pilot partners running AI agents in production. Book a demo or contact us.
Status, stated plainly
Internal analytical estimates; not an independent appraisal, not a financing valuation, not a guarantee. No patent has been filed yet. Same-project tests only; no third-party audit. Pre-production.
Pre-production. Same-project tests; no third-party audit yet; no patent filed yet.