Security
A primary internal company segment within Security Infrastructure Tools, derived deterministically from the shared yc tag “Security”. This is a classification of current window members, not a causal layer or a separate time trend.
YC DATA · 6,287 COMPANIES · OCTOBER 2, 2026
FORMATION · FIRST SURFACED SUMMER 2022
Return to SignalSecurity Infrastructure Tools
ACCELERATED · SUMMER 202282% confidenceObserved October 2, 2026Source: Description cluster · description-only
The count
2.63×
2/791 → 9/1353; +0.41 percentage points of formation share.
S14S18S21S23S26
About this formation
What stands out across this group is how much of "security infrastructure" has quietly become compliance automation and workflow labor-replacement rather than cryptography or defense in the traditional sense. Oneleet and Stacksi both attack the paperwork side of security, SOC 2 audits and vendor questionnaires, freeing engineers from busywork that used to be outsourced to consultants, while ContraForce and Slauth.io push further into automating the actual configuration and incident response work that security engineers do by hand. Only a couple of companies, Palitronica with its physical infrastructure attack detection and authzed with its authorization layer for AI systems at OpenAI and Zoom, still resemble what "security" meant a decade ago: defending a system against an active adversary. That split, paperwork automation on one side and infrastructure-level defense on the other, is easy to miss when every company gets filed under the same label. The category's 2.63x growth rate, well ahead of the broader Security formation's 1.93x and far outpacing Developer Tools at 0.48x, suggests the compliance-automation wave is the real driver of the acceleration, not general-purpose dev tooling. This timing tracks with SOC 2 becoming a hard prerequisite for enterprise deals since around 2022, just as large language models became capable enough to actually read and answer the security questionnaires that used to require a dedicated engineer.
The companies behind the signal — 9
Summer 2022
Oneleet
Description classified into Security Infrastructure Tools.
Summer 2022
Slauth.io
Description classified into Security Infrastructure Tools.
Winter 2022
Palitronica Inc
Description classified into Security Infrastructure Tools.
Summer 2021
ContraForce
Description classified into Security Infrastructure Tools.
Summer 2021
Superwall
Description classified into Security Infrastructure Tools.
Winter 2021
Avenue
Description classified into Security Infrastructure Tools.
Winter 2021
Stacksi
Description classified into Security Infrastructure Tools.
Winter 2021
Svix
Description classified into Security Infrastructure Tools.
Winter 2021
authzed
Description classified into Security Infrastructure Tools.
Inside Security Infrastructure Tools
Developer Tools
A primary internal company segment within Security Infrastructure Tools, derived deterministically from the shared yc tag “Developer Tools”. This is a classification of current window members, not a causal layer or a separate time trend.
Outside corroboration — does anyone else see this?
No comparable outside activity is connected yet.
Related formations
Similarly named categories — not necessarily the same thing
These share a word with “Security Infrastructure Tools” but are tracked as separate categories. The real overlap below is the actual share of Security Infrastructure Tools’s companies also found in that category — not a guess.
Citation
Cambrian Signal, “Security Infrastructure Tools,” publication yc-2026-10-02-semantic-v8, snapshot October 2, 2026.
cambrian.jafar.com/formation/security-infrastructure-tools