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This week's issue is backed by Maze and Rippling.

Hope you had a great weekend!

The data saga continues (Wu-Tang!). This one was a longer-form expansion of part of my talk at this past summer’s Innovators & Investors Summit at Black Hat USA. I’ve been tracking how the public cyber stocks have been responding when frontier AI labs make cyber announcements:

With Q3 of cyber earnings season upon us, I thought it was a good time to look back at how markets have done this year.

Also hilarious how many AI slop comments ended up on this post. This may come as a surprise for some, but LinkedIn has really gone downhill in 2026. 🥴

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Table of Contents

😎 Vibe Check

Click the options below to vote on whether you are a practitioner, founder, or investor. Leave a comment, and I'll anonymously feature the best takes in the next issue!

Which security category makes a resurgence in Q4 2026?

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Last issue’s vibe check:
Can an AI agent ever truly have an "identity"?
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes, and it can be separate from humans
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, but it only assumes the identity it runs under
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, by use of whatever credentials it finds
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No, everything is permitted unless explicitly denied
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (tell me)

Most of you think an AI agent can have an identity of its own. A good chunk of the "Other" crowd showed up to argue about what "identity" even means in the first place, which honestly might be the better question.

The market already seems to agree agent identity matters, just not as its own category. Over the past year, the biggest identity deals went to platforms outside traditional IAM, like Cyera buying Oasis, CrowdStrike buying SGNL, and Cisco buying Astrix. My bet is that agent identity ends up as a feature of whatever platform the agent already runs on, not something you buy on its own.

Some of the top comments from last week’s vibe check:

💬 "Depends on your definition of identity. Its Identity to a knowing person is a program. Its identity to an unknowing person is a façade. Its identity to itself is (for now) what it is told it is."

💬 “This might be bordering on philosophy (or just semantics), but this feels more a question of what an "identity" is, whether it's a set of creds or a fingerprint (defined empirically) or a unique set of labels or meaning (defined intrinsically)... if you consider an "identity" as an "object" (in the CompSci sense) with credentials attached, far more than just autonomous, sentient, or sapient actors could qualify”

💰 Market Summary

Private Markets

  • 6 venture funding rounds announced, totaling $211.0M in disclosed amounts

  • 1 credit facility announced

  • 8 M&A announcements across 3 countries and 4 categories

  • 88% of M&A announcements were service companies

Public Markets

» Trends, year-over-year charts, and every deal live on The Signal →

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🏢 Funding

» Connect Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client to The Signal via the MCP for free. «

  • Sentra (IL) · $150.0M Series C | cloud-native data security platform, led by Capital One Ventures (more)

  • Lazarus AI · $43.0M Venture Round | AI source-code vulnerability platform, from QBE Ventures, Mucker Capital, Motivate Venture Capital, State Farm Ventures, Wave Function Ventures, Indelible Solutions, Joyance Partners, Allegis Capital, One Way Ventures, AngelList, Techstars, and Plug and Play (more)

  • Brava Security (US) · $15.0M Seed | cloud security telemetry engine, led by F2 Venture Capital and Pitango VC (more)

  • CyberKord (IT) · $3.0M Pre-Seed | security operations automation platform, led by 360 Capital (more)

  • Enginsight (DE) · Undisclosed amount in a venture round | managed detection and response (MDR), led by Verdane (more)

  • Fourthline (NL) · Undisclosed credit facility, acquisition financing | anti-fraud and identity verification platform, from AshGrove Capital (more)

  • Veridas (ES) · Undisclosed Private Equity | digital identity verification platform, led by Finch Capital and Seaya Andromeda (more)

SEC filings may reflect partial or interim terms, and the final round numbers can change.

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions

📚 Great Reads

*Sponsored

🧪 Labs

“You can do more than just hit the Enter key.”

🫡 Signing Off

Have questions, comments, or feedback? Just reply back and let me know.

If you find this newsletter useful and know others who would, I'd really appreciate it if you'd forward it to them!

Mike P

P.S. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

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