Serval Acquires Ensignia and Names Sam Stewart Head of Security

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Serval has acquired Ensignia, a software supply chain security startup, and appointed its founder and CEO, Sam Stewart, as Serval’s Head of Security. The transaction brings Ensignia’s focus on trusted code, dependencies, and build pipelines into an AI-native enterprise service management company that is expanding beyond IT support.

Financial terms were not disclosed. The combination is notable because Serval’s automation agents increasingly operate across systems that control employee access, credentials, endpoints, and sensitive business workflows. Bringing security leadership and supply chain expertise in-house gives the company a way to develop those agents and their controls as one system rather than as separate layers.

Serval positions its platform as an alternative to legacy IT service management tools that record and route work but leave much of the execution to human teams. Its agents are designed to create automations and resolve employee requests inside a governed environment spanning IT, HR, finance, legal, and security.

That model raises the stakes for identity, authorization, auditing, and software integrity. An automation agent may need to touch multiple enterprise systems to complete a request, making guardrails and traceability central product requirements rather than secondary controls. Ensignia’s work on verifying software and infrastructure provides a technical foundation for those requirements.

Alex McLeod, co-founder and CTO of Serval, said the company was built on the premise that “automation and security have to advance together.”