Presented by RSAC
For two decades, the RSAC Innovation Sandbox competition has been the industry’s most trusted crystal ball. With over $50.1 billion in investments and over 100 acquisitions from its alumni, the competition has an exceptional track record of identifying future leaders of cybersecurity before the rest of the world knows their names.
Cecilia Marinier, vice president of innovation and scholars at RSAC, says the competition’s track record also presents a story of generational innovation that speaks for itself.
"We see one founder buying another founder, buying another founder," Mariner says. "Think about the amount of knowledge accumulated, and how powerful it is to continue building on such a solid foundation."
It’s a pattern repeated across Sandbox’s alumni network. Last year, Calypso AI CEOs Donnchadh Casey and James White sold their company to F5, whose current chief product officer is Kunal Anand. Anand was on stage at the RSAC 2016 Innovation Sandbox as co-founder of Prevotti. His company was bought by Imperva, which was the winner of the competition in 2007. All of this resulted in a close-knit circle of founders, operators, and acquirers that continues to shape the cybersecurity ecosystem.
Oliver Fredericks, currently appearing twice on CrowdStrike’s GM Innovation Sandbox stage, won in 2016 with Phantom, which was acquired by Splunk. He then returned as a 2023 finalist with Pangea, which was later acquired by CrowdStrike. StackRock’s 2017 finalist Ali Golshan sold Gretel AI to Nvidia. Rehan Jalil, the 2020 winner who brought security AI to the platform, saw his company acquired by Veem for $2.7 billion.
"He is with B," Marinier notes, The Sandbox underscores the scale of value emerging from the alumni network. "Those numbers also speak for themselves."
Watch the 2026 RSAC Top 10 Finalists Live on Stage
This year’s top ten finalists will take the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center on Monday, March 23, each giving a three-minute pitch to a panel of experienced industry judges. The lineup reads like a map of enterprise security’s most urgent pressure points in 2026: agentic AI governance, non-human identity management, social engineering defense, supply chain provenance, and AI-native code security, among others.
Finalists include:
- attraction security: : Uses its agentive AI workforce to target scams and human-centric fraud
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Apparently A.I.: : Helps teams ship secure software faster by replacing manual work with AI-powered reviews
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crash override: embeds into CI/CD to capture build execution data that the API can’t access
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picture security: Finds and fixes broken security flows across the entire SecOps stack
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Geordi AI: : A security and governance platform built for AI agents
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glide detection: : Verify users instantly and securely—without passwords or SMS codes
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humanix: designed to prevent social engineering attacks by detecting and responding to attacks on people
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Realm Labs: : Enables enterprises to see inside AI "Brain" and monitor his thoughts during the estimation
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token security: : Focused on controlling AI agents and machine identity at enterprise scale
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zero path: : Replaces traditional SAST, SCA, and latent scanning with a single AI-native engine capable of detecting complex business logic errors.
"The most disruptive technology at the moment is clearly AI, and it’s bringing with it some entirely new security challenges that are evolving at the same rate as AI itself." Mariner says. "Our finalists are bringing cutting-edge solutions to tackle those problems and defeat those nefarious actors."
Agentic AI, in particular, emerged as a major topic in this cycle.
"Governance for AI, continuous monitoring, automation, SecOps resiliency, everything from threat modeling to how to use agentic AI, and then controls against the entry of agentic AI into systems, it’s all in our top 10," She says. "This is a call to action for the security leaders of today and tomorrow."
Who selects the winners, and why does it matter
One of the lesser-known secrets behind Sandbox’s track record is the rigor of its judging panel. This year’s panel included:
- Nasreen RezaiSVP and CISO at Verizon
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larry feinsmithHead of Global Technology Strategy at JPMorganChase
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david chenHead of Global Technology Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley
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Paul KochharCryptographer and Entrepreneur
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Neelofar RaziOperating Partner at Capital Meridian Partners
"We are very careful about how we put the panels together," Mariner explains. "They need to represent a variety of perspectives, including keeping an eye on startups that are likely to have a positive trajectory. They are the top leaders in the industry, able to identify companies that have risen above the noise."
Crucially, the RSAC itself plays no role in the selection, she says.
"Judges select these companies," She says. "They have for the last 20 years, and they will in the future." He argues that this freedom is the main reason why this competition holds so much importance in the industry.
$5 million investment for the future of finalists
Starting in 2025, as part of the competition’s 20th anniversary, all 10 finalists receive a $5 million investment in the form of a SAFE note, funded by Crosspoint Capital. It’s still early days to gauge the full impact, but Marinier points to the trajectory of last year’s winner, ProjectDiscovery.
The funding launched ProjectDiscovery from an optimistic startup to a company with enough potential to hire industry professionals with experience and knowledge who had not previously considered early-stage startups. They not only had money, they had recognition, and they were able to attract great talent because they were clearly going somewhere.
"The money is ultimately about extending the runway," Mariner says. "SAFE Note gives finalists a chance to scale up infrastructure and take advantage of the visibility generated by the competition, before the spotlight fades."
RSAC’s comprehensive innovation ecosystem
The Innovation Sandbox competition is key, but it is the centerpiece of a much larger innovation infrastructure that Marinier has built over the last decade. In that time, RSAC’s innovation programming has impacted more than 1,000 companies across multiple programs.
The Launch Pad, now in its sixth year, serves as a sandbox "Younger brother," A Shark Tank-style platform where first-stage companies receive real feedback from judges without declaring a winner, although some of those companies are already starting "Graduate" To the next level of industry success. The Early Stage Expo, which this year features 78 companies, sits alongside the conference’s 600 main exhibitors to give attendees an insight into what’s coming down the pipeline.
The Innovation Showcase runs not just during conference week, but throughout the year, featuring live Q&A sessions between entrepreneurs and the audience, taken to RSAC’s new membership platform, in an effort to maintain connections not just for five days in San Francisco, but throughout the year.
There is also a dedicated track for investors and entrepreneurs, with VCs sharing forward-looking vision, sessions on fundraising strategy and designing partnership frameworks. And for the next generation, RSAC’s Security Scholars Program selects 60 students from universities across the country, with 22 presenting research posters on the Wednesday of conference week.
"Security scholars presenting their research that could advance emerging technology," Mariner says. "They’re in the early stages, working their way up the ladder. One day they will come to our stage, and after that, the world will become their oyster."
Why is the RSAC Conference Unforgettable?
For anyone serious about the future of cybersecurity, whether you’re a CISO, founder, investor, or engineer, Marinier makes the case clearly.
"Building a safer society requires bold ideas, new technologies and real-world solutions." She says. "The RSAC conference is bringing together some of the newest, smartest, most innovative security approaches in the industry for important conversations about solutions to the security problems facing the world."
The RSAC Innovation Sandbox Competition begins at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, March 23, at the Moscone Center. Winners will be announced approximately noon the same day.
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