Welcome to The Trident Radar!

This week's headline needs no introduction: Palo Alto Networks acquired CyberArk for $26.2 billion, the largest pure-play cybersecurity M&A deal in history. Identity security just became a platform play, and the ripple effects will reshape the market for years.

But the week wasn't just about mega-deals. Check Point went on an acquisition spree, picking up three Israeli startups in a single week. GitGuardian raised $50M to push secrets detection global. And the seed-funded cyber startup data we've been tracking tells a sobering story about survival rates in this market.

Lets dive in.

In our latest Cyber CEO episode, Josh Keeley sat down with Oz Alashe, CEO and Founder of CybSafe, to unpack why the human layer is still the biggest blind spot in cybersecurity.

Oz’s career is anything but linear - from Sandhurst and the Parachute Regiment, to covert intelligence work, to advising governments on cyber resilience - before building CybSafe around one obsession: if we’re serious about human risk, where’s the data that proves what we’re doing actually works?

Insider Insight: The Brutal Math of Cyber Startup Survival: What the Data Actually Shows
Company Spotlight: Backslash Security

GitGuardian — Series C — $50M (Insight Partners)
Secrets detection pioneer scaling globally after dominating the European market. This round funds expansion into US, APAC, South America, and Middle East. One of the few DevSecOps vendors with genuine enterprise traction.

Category: Secrets Detection / DevSecOps
HQ: Paris, France

Reco — Series B — $30M (Zeev Ventures) — $185M post-money valuation
Dynamic SaaS security platform closing the protection gap caused by rapid SaaS expansion. Full lifecycle coverage from discovery to detection and response. Workday Ventures and Insight Partners also participated.

Category: SaaS Security / SSPM
HQ: Altamonte Springs, FL

Tharros — Venture Funding — $30M (Blue Delta Capital Partners)
Cyber-operations support for government agencies and critical infrastructure. Funds will scale technical capabilities, expand elite cyber talent roster, and enable tuck-in acquisitions. Defense-adjacent cyber services continue attracting capital.

Category: Cyber Operations / Government Services
HQ: Fulton, MD

Nucleus Security — Series C — $20M (Delta-v Capital) — $175M post-money valuation Vulnerability management platform positioning as the single source of truth for all security findings. Funds support product development and scaling customer deployments. Arthur Ventures also participated.

Category: Vulnerability Management
HQ: Sarasota, FL

Backslash Security — Series A — $19M (Kompas VC)
Cloud-native application security platform merging code and cloud security findings. Automated threat modelling, code risk prioritisation, and simplified remediation. Funds R&D expansion and US/Europe GTM scale-up. See Company Spotlight below.

Category: Application Security / Code Security
HQ: Tel Aviv, Israel

EntropiQ — Series A — $10M (In Progress)
Quantum entropy and endpoint cloaking for critical infrastructure. On-demand, elastic quantum entropy as a service with military-grade crypto-agile endpoint protection. Round expected to close by June 2026.

Category: Post-Quantum Cryptography / Endpoint Security
HQ: Atlanta, GA

Clearly AI — Seed — $8.4M (Basis Set Ventures) RSA Innovation Sandbox 2026 finalist. Automating security and privacy reviews — the most painful bottleneck in enterprise security. Also received $5M in SAFE notes as part of the Innovation Sandbox contest. Crosspoint Capital, Y Combinator, and former Google CISO Gerhard Eschelbeck participated.

Category: AI Security Automation / Privacy Compliance
HQ: Seattle, WA

Almanax — Early Stage VC — Undisclosed (In Progress)
Security platform identifying vulnerabilities early in development. Automated scanning, threat modelling, and vulnerability analysis for developers and security teams.

Category: Application Security / Shift-Left
HQ: New York, NY

CyberArk → Acquired by Palo Alto Networks (NAS: PANW)
Deal Type: Merger / Acquisition
Deal Date: February 11, 2026
Deal Size: $26.2B

The largest pure-play cybersecurity acquisition in history. CyberArk's privileged access management platform, used by more than half of the Fortune 500, joins Palo Alto's security portfolio. The deal signals that identity security has become table stakes for platform vendors, and standalone identity players may face increasing pressure to consolidate or get acquired.

Cyata → Acquired by Check Point Software Technologies (NAS: CHKP)
Deal Type: Merger / Acquisition
Deal Date: February 12, 2026
Deal Size: Undisclosed

Agent identity control plane for governing how AI agents access, act, and behave inside the enterprise. Check Point moves fast on agentic security — one of three Israeli acquisitions this week.

Cyclops Security → Acquired by Check Point Software Technologies (NAS: CHKP) Deal Type: Merger / Acquisition
Deal Date: February 12, 2026
Deal Size: Undisclosed

AI-powered cybersecurity platform that collects metadata from the security stack and uses AI to reduce mean time to detect and repair. Check Point continues rebuilding its innovation pipeline through M&A.

Rotate → Acquired by Check Point Software Technologies (NAS: CHKP)
Deal Type: Merger / Acquisition
Deal Date: February 12, 2026
Deal Size: Undisclosed

SMB-focused cybersecurity platform with integrated cyber insurance. Detects ransomware, phishing, and financial fraud while protecting cloud environments. Check Point's third Israeli acquisition of the week — a clear down-market push.

Anchor Security → Acquired by Keycard Labs
Deal Type: Merger / Acquisition
Deal Date: February 10, 2026
Deal Size: Undisclosed

Information security and access management company providing automated certificate provisioning, lifecycle management, and deployment. Small exit in the certificate management space.

Arco Cyber → Acquired by Sophos (via Thoma Bravo)
Deal Type: LBO / Add-on
Deal Date: February 10, 2026
Deal Size: Undisclosed

Continuous cyber risk and control assurance platform. Sophos bolsters its risk management capabilities with this tuck-in acquisition. Thoma Bravo continues building out the Sophos platform.

~80% of seed-funded cyber startups never reach Series A.

Of roughly 1,000 companies in the past 5 years, with enough runway to have had a fair shot (seeded 2+ years ago), only about 1 in 5 made it to a Series A. And the trend is getting harder, not easier:

Seed size is the biggest predictor of survival.

This is critical for anyone advising on startup risk:

That's a 7x difference between the smallest and largest seeds. The size of the seed round matters enormously, it buys runway, talent, and time to find product-market fit.

How long does it take?

For the companies that do make it, the median time from seed to Series A is ~16 months. But the spread is wide:

If a company hasn't raised a Series A within 3 years of their seed, the odds are very slim they ever will.

Geography matters — Israel dominates.

Israeli cyber companies are 5x more likely to reach Series A than UK ones. Part of this is round size with Israeli median seed at $6M vs. $1.3M in the UK. Part of it is ecosystem density and exit velocity.

AI-enabled cyber has an edge.

AI cyber companies are ~60% more likely to survive to Series A. The market is rewarding AI-native architectures.

The Trident Take

When you're evaluating a startup as an investor, candidate, vendor partner etc, the seed round size is one of the strongest predictors of survival. A $2M seed in cybersecurity has fundamentally different odds than a $10M seed. Geography, AI positioning, and time since funding all compound the picture.

The market is rebounding (deal volume tracking toward $3.9B in 2025, up from $2.9B in 2024), but the bar for Series A is higher than ever. The startups that survive are raising bigger seeds, moving faster, and increasingly building with AI at the core.

Website: www.backslash.security

Founded: 2022
HQ: Tel Aviv, Israel
Total Raised: $26.63M
Latest Round: $19M Series A (February 10, 2026) — led by Kompas VC

Backslash Security is building a cloud-native application security platform that merges code and cloud security findings into a unified view, addressing the fragmentation that plagues most enterprise AppSec programs.

What they do:

The platform combines automated threat modelling, code risk prioritisation, and simplified remediation across applications and teams. The key differentiator is focusing on real vulnerabilities ie. the ones that are actually exploitable in your specific environment, rather than flooding teams with theoretical findings and false positives.

With the rise of "vibe coding" (AI-generated code proliferating across enterprises), Backslash has positioned itself to address the unique risks that emerge when developers ship code they didn't fully write or review. Their OSS reachability analysis and phantom package visibility capabilities are specifically designed for the AI-generated code era.

The team:

Co-founders Shahar Man (CEO) and Yossi Pik (CTO) bring deep application security backgrounds. The investor base includes First Rays Venture Partners, StageOne Ventures, The D. E. Shaw Group, and now Kompas VC leading the Series A with Maniv Mobility also participating.

Why it matters:

Application security tooling has historically been noisy, slow, and disconnected from cloud reality. As enterprises ship faster (and increasingly with AI-generated code), the gap between "vulnerability found" and "vulnerability that matters" keeps widening. Backslash is betting that unified code-to-cloud visibility and AI-powered prioritisation can close that gap.

The Trident Take:

Everything we can see points to a high probability of a company with strong exit potential. With comparables like Snyk, Checkmarx, and Veracode, all of which have seen significant M&A or PE activity, Backslash is positioned in a category where acquirers are actively consolidating. The "vibe coding" narrative is timely, and the Israeli cyber pedigree (34% seed-to-Series A conversion vs. 6% in UK) adds to the profile.

One to watch.

Senior Sales Engineer
💰 $170K USD
📍 USA (Remote)
Security posture management vendor helping enterprises validate their security controls continuously.
Contact: [email protected]

VP Engineering
💰 $225K USD
📍 USA
Data security operations platform building out engineering leadership for next growth phase.
Contact: [email protected]

Account Executive
💰 $150K base / $300K OTE
📍 USA AI-powered SecOps platform focused on vulnerability triage and remediation. High-growth opportunity.
Contact: [email protected]

Product Marketing Manager
💰 £100K
📍 UK / Europe Ethical hacker bug bounty platform expanding marketing team across EMEA.
Contact: [email protected]

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