As concern over AI safety and rogue agents continue to make headlines, it\u2019s no surprise that cybersecurity stocks are rising, or that investors are pouring massive amounts of capital into startups trying to build the next generation of security for an AI-native world. We\u2019re even seeing companies like Instinct and Simile bring in nine-figure checks and valuations that wouldn’t have made sense a few years ago. <\/p>\n
With a front row seat to it all is Shardul Shah, a partner at Index Ventures who\u2019s spent nearly two decades investing in cybersecurity and enterprise software \u2014 including six consecutive rounds in cloud security startup Wiz, which Google acquired for $32 billion earlier this year in one of its largest acquisitions ever. <\/p>\n
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Shah joins Rebecca Bellan to break down why he thinks periodic, human-in-the-loop security can\u2019t keep up anymore, and why Index continues investing in AI-native security companies at stages that once required much more proof. <\/p>\n
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. <\/p>\n
Chapters: <\/p>\n
00:00 Intro <\/p>\n
02:02 Why AI is creating a new cybersecurity category <\/p>\n
05:16 The cyber insurance layer most companies overlook <\/p>\n
09:15 Why Index is betting on AI-native security platforms <\/p>\n
12:40 Will Wiz become a talent factory for new startups? <\/p>\n
14:46 What actually makes a founder worth betting on <\/p>\n
16:11 The hard part of knowing when to double down <\/p>\n
18:53 Why Shardul says he\u2019s not a visionary investor <\/p>\n
21:16 How AI could reshape the entire security stack <\/p>\n
24:18 What makes an AI security startup defensible <\/p>\n
25:14 Why he doesn\u2019t want to find \u201cthe next Wiz\u201d <\/p>\n
26:48 Why investors are writing huge checks so early <\/p>\n
29:39 What happens to AI valuations if the frontier gets paced <\/p>\n
31:01 Outro<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As concern over AI safety and rogue agents continue to make headlines, it\u2019s no surprise that cybersecurity stocks are rising,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}