Surging demand for native-AI cybersecurity services (and the security capabilities needed to tame agentic AI) has put 2026 on the path to become another record-breaking year for cybersecurity-startup acquisitions.
While the value of financing deals is on track to decline slightly this year — dropping to an annualized 754 funding rounds, from 820 last year — the number of mergers and acquisitions should reach 450 deals, up from 404 transactions last year, according to the latest report from Momentum Cyber, a cybersecurity investment firm. Identity and access management, non-human identity, data security, agentic security, runtime protections, and locking down operational technology are the major categories of interest, according to the firm.
Advances in the use of AI for cybersecurity, such as Anthropic's Mythos foundational model, and the advent of AI-automated attacks, has given dealmakers a sense of urgency, says Eric McAlpine, founder and CEO of the Austin-based firm.
"We have just never seen a pace like this before," he says. "A company doesn't have to be native-agentic, but it will be AI first, and I think that's what you're seeing in a lot of these deals nowadays."
In 2025, M&A deals set records for both volume at 404 deals and value, with companies spending $97 billion to acquire startups. The past two years have also hosted massive deals, including Google's purchase of Wiz for $32 billion in 2025. This year, however, investors are taking dual approaches to AI: funding early-stage startup to develop AI-native categories, while larger companies are acquiring AI startups to build out capabilities, such as Cyera's $1 billion buy of Oasis Security and Cisco's dual acquisitions of Astrix Security and WideField Security.
AI has accelerated the market, sped up the incubation cycle for startups, and made deals move faster — faster even than the cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) investment markets, says Zane Lackey, a general partner with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.