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Introduced by RSAC
For twenty years, the RSAC Innovation Sandbox contest has been the business's most dependable crystal ball. With over $50.1 billion in investments and greater than 100 acquisitions throughout its alumni, the competition has a rare monitor document of recognizing cybersecurity's future leaders earlier than the remainder of the world is aware of their names.
The competition's monitor document additionally presents a narrative of generational innovation that speaks for itself, says Cecilia Marinier, vice chairman of innovation and students at RSAC.
"We see one founder shopping for one other founder shopping for one other founder," Marinier says. "Take into consideration the quantity of amassed information, and the way highly effective it’s to proceed to construct on such stable foundations."
It's a sample that repeats all through the Sandbox's alumni community. Final yr, Donnchadh Casey and James White, CEOs of Calypso AI bought their firm to F5, whose present Chief Product Officer is Kunal Anand. Anand was on the RSAC 2016 Innovation Sandbox stage as co-founder of Prevoty. His firm was purchased by Imperva, which was the winner of the competition in 2007. It’s all resulted in a tight-knit cycle of founders, operators, and acquirers that continues to form the cybersecurity ecosystem.
Oliver Friedrichs, at the moment GM of CrowdStrike appeared on the Innovation Sandbox stage twice, successful in 2016 with Phantom, which was acquired by Splunk. He then returned as a 2023 finalist with Pangea, which was later acquired by CrowdStrike. Ali Golshan, a 2017 finalist with StackRox, went on to promote Gretel AI to Nvidia. Rehan Jalil, the 2020 winner who introduced Securiti AI to the stage, noticed his firm acquired by Veeam for $2.7 billion.
"That's with a B," Marinier notes, underscoring the size of worth rising from the Sandbox alumni community. "These numbers additionally converse for themselves."
See the 2026 RSAC high 10 finalists dwell on stage
This yr's High Ten finalists take the stage at Moscone Middle in San Francisco on Monday, March 23, every delivering a three-minute pitch to a panel of seasoned business judges. The lineup reads like a map of enterprise safety's most pressing strain factors in 2026: agentic AI governance, non-human identification administration, social engineering protection, provide chain provenance, and AI-native code safety, amongst others.
Finalists embrace:
Allure Safety: makes use of its agentic AI workforce to targets scams and human-centric fraud
Clearly AI: helps groups ship safe software program quick by changing handbook work with AI-powered evaluations
Crash Override: embeds in CI/CD to seize construct execution knowledge that APIs can't entry
Fig Safety: finds and fixes damaged safety flows throughout your entire SecOps stack
Geordie AI: a safety and governance platform purpose-built for AI brokers
Glide Id: verifies customers immediately and securely—with out passwords or SMS codes
Humanix: designed to cease social engineering assaults by detecting and responding to assaults on individuals
Realm Labs: permits enterprises to see contained in the AI's "mind" and monitor its ideas throughout inference
Token Safety: targeted on governing AI brokers and machine identities at enterprise scale
ZeroPath: replaces conventional SAST, SCA, and secrets and techniques scanning with a single AI-native engine able to detecting advanced enterprise logic flaws.
"Essentially the most disruptive know-how proper now could be clearly AI, and it's bringing with it some brand-new safety challenges which might be being developed on the identical charge that AI is evolving," Marinier says. "Our finalists are bringing cutting-edge options for tackling these issues and beating these nefarious actors."
Agentic AI, specifically, emerged as a dominant theme this cycle.
"Governance for AI, steady monitoring, automation, SecOps resilience, every thing from menace modeling to learn how to use agentic AI, after which controlling in opposition to agentic AI moving into programs, it's all there in our high 10," she says. "It's the decision to motion to immediately and tomorrow's safety leaders."
Who selects the winners, and why it issues
One of many less-discussed secrets and techniques behind the Sandbox's monitor document is the rigor of its judging panel. This yr's panel contains:
Nasrin Rezai, SVP & CISO at Verizon
Larry Feinsmith, head of worldwide know-how technique at JPMorganChase
David Chen, head of worldwide know-how funding banking at Morgan Stanley
Paul Kocher, cryptographer and entrepreneur
Niloofar Razi, working accomplice at Capitol Meridian Companions
"We're very cautious about how we put collectively the panel," Marinier explains. "They need to symbolize a wide range of views, together with a watch for startups which might be more likely to have optimistic trajectories. They're high leaders within the business, who’re capable of acknowledge the businesses which have risen above the noise."
Critically, RSAC itself performs no function within the choice, she provides.
"The judges choose these corporations," she says. "They’ve for the previous 20 years, and they are going to be going into the longer term." That independence, she argues, is a core motive why the competition carries such weight with the business.
The $5 million funding for the way forward for finalists
Starting in 2025, as a part of the competition's twentieth anniversary, all 10 finalists obtain a $5 million funding within the type of a SAFE notice, funded by Crosspoint Capital. It's nonetheless early days for measuring the complete impression, however Marinier factors to the trajectory of ProjectDiscovery, final yr's winner.
Funding launched ProjectDiscovery from a hopeful startup to an organization with sufficient traction to rent business professionals with expertise and know-how, who wouldn't have beforehand thought-about an early-stage startup. Not solely did they’ve the funds, that they had the popularity, they usually have been capable of appeal to nice expertise as a result of they're clearly going someplace.
"The cash is finally about extending the runway," Marinier provides. "The SAFE notice offers finalists respiration room to scale infrastructure and capitalize on the visibility the competition generates, earlier than the highlight fades."
RSAC's broader innovation ecosystem
The Innovation Sandbox contest is the flagship, but it surely's the centerpiece of a considerably bigger innovation infrastructure that Marinier has constructed over the previous decade. In that point, RSAC's innovation programming has touched greater than 1,000 corporations throughout a number of packages.
Launch Pad, now in its sixth yr, capabilities because the Sandbox's "little brother," a Shark Tank-style discussion board the place earlier-stage corporations obtain actual suggestions from judges with out a winner being declared, although a few of these corporations are already beginning to "graduate" to the following stage of business success. The Early Stage Expo, that includes 78 corporations this yr, offers attendees a window into what's coming down the pipeline, sitting alongside the convention's 600 essential exhibitors.
The Innovation Showcase runs year-round, not simply throughout convention week, with dwell Q&A classes between entrepreneurs and audiences which might be then carried into RSAC's new membership platform, an effort to maintain connections throughout the complete yr, not simply the 5 days in San Francisco.
There's additionally a devoted monitor for traders and entrepreneurs, that includes VCs sharing forward-looking views, classes on fundraising technique, and design partnership frameworks. And for the following era, RSAC's Safety Students program selects 60 college students from universities throughout the nation, with 22 presenting analysis posters on Wednesday of convention week.
"The safety students are presenting their analysis that might result in nascent know-how," Marinier says. "They're in theearly part, working their manner up the ladder. Sooner or later they'll make it onto our phases, and after that, the world's their oyster."
Why RSAC Convention is unmissable
For anybody severe about the way forward for cybersecurity, whether or not you're a CISO, a founder, an investor, or an engineer, Marinier makes the case plainly.
"Constructing a safer society requires daring concepts, and new applied sciences, and real-world options," she says. "RSAC Convention is bringing collectively some the latest, the neatest, essentially the most modern safety views within the business for essential conversations about fixing the safety issues the world faces."
The RSAC Innovation Sandbox contest kicks off at Moscone Middle on Monday, March 23 at 9:30 AM PT. Winners might be introduced by roughly midday the identical day.
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