Adaptive Security Named to Fast Company's 2026 Next Big Things in Tech List

We have some news to share: Adaptive Security has been named to Fast Company's 2026 Next Big Things in Tech list, an annual honor recognizing breakthrough technologies with the potential to transform industries and shape the future.

Fast Company Editor-in-Chief Brendan Vaughan described the spirit of this year's list this way: "The most exciting technology innovations are the ones that move beyond promise to demonstrate real potential for impact."

We're proud to be included, and grateful to the team whose work got us here.

From security awareness training to a broader platform

This recognition arrives alongside a milestone of our own. Fewer than two years after emerging from stealth, Adaptive now protects more than 2,000 enterprise customers. That pace tracks how quickly AI-generated attacks have moved from rare to routine.

We started with AI-powered security awareness training, teaching employees to recognize cloned executive voices, deepfake video calls, and fabricated urgency. Since then, we've built on that foundation with two new products:

• Agentic Email Security stops AI-generated phishing before a message ever reaches an inbox.

• AI Governance gives security teams visibility into, and control over, how employees use AI tools.

As CEO and co-founder Brian Long puts it: "We built this company on security awareness training because employees are the first line of defense. Agentic Email Security is the next layer. It puts a team of AI agents on every message, built to catch what older filters were never designed to see, and it runs automatically without anyone logging in to manage it."

How Agentic Email Security works

Agentic Email Security connects to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 through an API, with no change to mail routing. A team of AI agents evaluates every message. Adaptive then automatically moves confirmed threats to spam, quarantine, or trash, based on a confidence threshold that security leaders set.

The early results are encouraging. About half of our customers already use at least one of our email security products, including many large enterprises. In one customer proof of concept, Adaptive caught 80% more malicious attacks than the customer's existing email defenses.

About the list

Fast Company's Next Big Things in Tech list recognizes innovative technologies from established companies, startups, and research teams that are making measurable progress toward transforming the lives of consumers, businesses, and society. This year's honorees span industries, and each demonstrates the potential for significant impact in the years ahead. As Vaughan said, the companies and teams on the list "are tackling ambitious problems with new ideas, products and approaches that have the potential to fundamentally shape the years ahead."

You can view the complete list at fastcompany.com/next-big-things-in-tech/list.

See it in action

Want to see how Agentic Email Security and AI Governance work in your environment? Request a demo to learn more.