Akto believes its placement reflects its platform approach across the full life cycle of agentic applications: discovery, automated AI red teaming, AI runtime controls and guardrails, and AI agent execution visibility.
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Akto, the leader in Agentic AI Security and MCP Security, today announced it has been named a Pioneer in the 2026 Gartner® Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security — Startup Vendors.
According to the report, Gartner defines the AI application security market as "technologies that protect enterprise-developed AI applications and agents by combining security testing, exposure management, and runtime defense to detect, alert, or block threats. Delivered via SaaS or on-premises technologies, these tools enable cybersecurity and risk teams to manage posture, conduct adversarial testing, and enforce real-time protection of AI applications."
The report identifies three core capabilities that define the market: automated AI discovery and inventory, automated AI security testing, and AI runtime defense.
Pioneer status recognizes Akto as an AI Security vendor that shows architecturally advanced approaches across the full life cycle of agentic AI applications, spanning AI discovery and AI Security posture management, automated AI security testing, AI runtime defense, and supervision of agent actions, session-level behavior, and tool interactions.
In Akto's view, Gartner's introduction of a dedicated quadrant for AI security reflects the market's rapid commercial growth and rising enterprise demand. Recent incidents involving OpenAI and Hugging Face, along with a Google Gemini agent inadvertently accessing real-world company environments, demonstrate how quickly the scale and urgency of AI security and safety risks have intensified over the past few months.
"We're proud to see Akto recognized as a Pioneer in this very important emerging AI category by Gartner," said Ankita Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder of Akto. "Enterprises face security challenges on two fronts: adopting AI safely across their workforce and securely building AI applications and agents for their customers. Most organizations still lack the visibility and controls required to do either with confidence. Akto addresses the full breadth of this challenge through its two flagship products, Atlas and Argus. Fortune 1000 companies trust Akto's AI security control plane to discover, assess, govern, and protect AI across their environments."
Akto believes AI security is not a single control point but a continuous loop: discover what is running, test it, enforce policy at runtime, trace what happened, and feed that context back into governance. The platform delivers this in two products. Akto Atlas covers the governance of employee AI usage, helping security teams discover the AI apps, agents, MCP servers, skills, and plugins used across the workforce while applying runtime controls to those interactions. Akto Argus provides security for internally built AI applications and agents, with AI red teaming, runtime guardrails, AI Security gateway, MCP security controls, and execution visibility across agent activity.
Being named a Pioneer in Gartner EMQ adds to Akto's Gartner recognition across multiple areas of AI security. In 2026, Akto was also named a Sample Vendor for AI Security Testing in the Gartner Hype Cycle for AI Services, 2026; a Sample Vendor for AI Runtime Defense in the Gartner Hype Cycle for AI Governance, 2026; and a Sample Vendor for AI Runtime Defense in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Data Security Technologies, 2026. Akto was also named a Representative Vendor in Gartner's 2025 guide on securing AI agents.
Fortune 1000 organizations today trust Akto to confidently, securely, and safely adopt AI and build with AI.
Read more about the recognition here.
Gartner Disclaimer
Source: Gartner, Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security — Startup Vendors, Meghan Hollis, Dionisio Zumerle, Dennis Xu, Marissa Schmidt, 16 September 2026, ID G00856640.
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About Akto
Akto is the leading Agentic AI Security platform, enabling enterprises to safely and securely adopt AI agents, MCPs, LLMs, and AI applications. The Akto platform provides continuous AI discovery, runtime guardrails, governance, AI security gateways, and automated red teaming, giving organizations a unified AI security control plane across their environments. Learn more at www.akto.io.
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SOURCE Akto
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