From AI endpoints to IAM: 5 cybersecurity CEOs we’ve been watching this summer

Cybersecurity has had no shortage of new companies and ideas this summer. Behind some of the most interesting developments are founders who have spent years working on the problems they are now trying to solve.

Their companies span different parts of the security stack, but they share a focus on adapting cybersecurity to an environment being reshaped by AI, cloud infrastructure, software and identity.

Here are five cybersecurity CEOs who have been on our radar this summer.

Rob Gurzeev, CyCognito

Rob Gurzeev has spent much of his career on the offensive side of cybersecurity, including work with Israel’s Unit 8200 and senior roles in cybersecurity R&D.

That background informs CyCognito’s approach to external attack surface management. Rather than relying entirely on an organization’s existing asset inventory, the company focuses on discovering what attackers can find from the outside.

CyCognito’s platform maps organizations’ external attack surfaces and uses automated analysis and testing to identify exposed, exploitable and sensitive assets. The company says its technology can work without requiring customers to provide an initial asset inventory or configuration.

Gurzeev’s work continues to center on a fundamental security question: what does an organization look like to an attacker when the attacker starts with nothing but the company’s name?

Asaf Wiener, Mate Security

Asaf Wiener brings product experience from two of the industry’s most prominent security companies. At Wiz, he led the Vulnerability Management product serving Fortune 500 companies and built a new product generating independent ARR. At Microsoft, he helped take Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management from incubation to a standalone, revenue-generating product.

Now, as CEO and co-founder of Mate Security, Wiener is applying that experience to AI-powered security operations. Mate is building around its Security Context Graph and agentic security operations, giving security teams a framework for connecting AI agents while maintaining orchestration and guardrails.

The broader idea is to move beyond AI assistants and explore what security operations look like when AI agents can actively investigate and respond.

Itay Keren, Bloom Security

Itay Keren made headlines this summer when Bloom Security emerged from stealth with a $20 million seed round led by Glilot Capital Partners and Ten Eleven Ventures.

Bloom is taking aim at endpoint security, but with a different definition of what an endpoint looks like. Keren’s thesis is that today’s endpoint has become an ecosystem containing AI agents, MCP servers, IDEs, browser extensions, packages and other software that can interact with sensitive data and systems.

That creates a challenge for traditional endpoint security products, which were largely designed around applications, processes and devices that were easier to identify and control.

Bloom is building around visibility and control across this new endpoint environment, putting Keren at the center of a growing conversation around securing AI-native computing.

Barak Klinghofer, Reclaim Security

Barak Klinghofer is approaching cybersecurity from the remediation side of the problem.

Before founding Reclaim Security, Klinghofer founded Hexadite, which was acquired by Microsoft, and later worked within Microsoft Security. His current company is focused on a familiar frustration for security teams: finding vulnerabilities is only useful if organizations can actually fix them.

Reclaim Security is building technology around automated exposure remediation, with an emphasis on understanding the potential impact of a fix before it reaches production.

The company’s approach reflects a broader shift in security from generating more findings to helping teams reduce the exposures they already know about.

Yossi Barishev, Way Security

Yossi Barishev has spent his career dealing with APTs and nation-state adversaries. Now, as CEO and co-founder of Way Security, he is focused on one of enterprise security‘s oldest problems: identity.

Way emerged from stealth this summer with a $20 million seed round co-led by Insight Partners and Glilot Capital. The company is building an AI-driven layer designed to help organizations operationalize and enforce identity and access controls across increasingly complex environments.

For Barishev, the challenge isn’t simply whether companies have IAM tools. It’s whether those tools are consistently translated into effective security enforcement across applications, users and identities.

The problems they’re building around

These five CEOs are tackling different parts of cybersecurity, but their companies reflect some of the industry’s biggest shifts.

Mate is exploring AI-driven security operations. Bloom is rethinking the endpoint for an AI-native environment. CyCognito is focused on discovering external exposure, Reclaim on turning findings into remediation, and Way on making identity controls work across complex enterprises.

As AI and autonomous software continue changing how businesses operate, these are the kinds of problems that could define the next chapter of enterprise security.