The J.P. Morgan Innovation Economy group hosted its second annual cybersecurity summit in April 2026, bringing together founders, investors and industry experts to discuss the state of cybersecurity. From this event and conversations with stakeholders across the industry, one thing is clear: cybersecurity is at an inflection point. Artificial intelligence (AI) is simultaneously a potent threat and a powerful defense. The builders who stand out will integrate AI to deliver improved outcomes a buyer can measure. “The modern ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) delivery model is quietly enabling cyber attackers and—as its adoption grows—is creating a substantial vulnerability that is weakening the global economic system.” Pat Opet Chief information security officer, JPMorganChase Enterprise AI adoption is pushing identity to the center of the threat landscape. For many organizations, non-human identities (NHIs)—digital credentials for AI agents, service accounts, machines and automated workflows—outnumbered humans 144-to-1 by mid-2025, a ratio that had grown 44% year over year, according to Entro Security’s H1 2025 research report. AI-driven automation has continued to accelerate the trend since. BeyondTrust’s Phantom Labs research, published in March, found a 466.7% year-over-year increase in AI agents operating inside enterprise environments. As these machine identities accumulate, broad permissions, unused credentials and limited visibility can create risks that are harder to track than human access. In enterprise conversations, governance is expanding to cover automated system-to-system access, authorized or not. For builders, this shift is reshaping where durable product categories are forming. NHI governance is emerging as a control layer for access decisions in an AI-driven enterprise. Products that help enterprises manage NHIs, rotate secrets and keys and provide a clear rationale for access decisions in agent-to-agent workflows are becoming foundational to safe AI adoption. As the machine population grows, buyer urgency is rising alongside it. Identity is one dimension of the expanding