bug-bounty
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The Security Company That Taught a Million Hackers - Then Gave Burp a Brain
Burp Suite grew from a hobby project with comic sound effects into the daily workbench of web-security professionals. PortSwigger’s real trick is the loop behind it: discover an attack, turn it into a tool, then teach the world how it works.
HackerOne Made a Business Out of Inviting Strangers to Break In
The bet sounded reckless: give hackers permission, set a bounty, and listen. One Pentagon pilot and hundreds of thousands of validated vulnerabilities later, HackerOne is trying to turn that human network into a continuous, AI-assisted security system.
Bugcrowd Built a Switchboard for Hackers - Now It Wants to Put AI on the Line
Bugcrowd turned an awkward corporate question - how do you invite strangers to attack your software safely? - into a managed marketplace. Its next wager is that machines should cover the map while human hackers chase the strange paths through it.
Nebula Security
Nebula Security is an AI-native cybersecurity company from Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch. Founded by world-class hackers - members of the world's #1 CTF team r3kapig, DEF CON finalists, Black Hat speakers, and a cybersecurity PhD - it pairs an autonomous code-scanning agent called VEGA with human expertise to audit software for vulnerabilities, from code-level bugs to architectural weaknesses. The team has earned $400K+ in bug bounties exploiting the Linux kernel and Chrome, and reported over a thousand vulnerabilities. Its pitch: 'Attackers already have AI. Get VEGA now.'
Cobalt
Cobalt is the pioneer of Pentest as a Service (PtaaS), pairing a curated community of vetted offensive-security experts (the Cobalt Core) with a SaaS platform that turns penetration testing from a months-long procurement exercise into an on-demand, continuous program. Founded in 2013, the company now serves 1,500+ customers and is leaning hard into AI-augmented offensive security.