post-quantum-cryptography
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John Chang and the case of the missing key
A chip can be copied. Its smallest manufacturing differences are another matter. John Chang is building Jmem Tek around that distinction, taking research from Taiwan into the business of trust.
Sectigo and the disappearing deadline
The internet runs on credentials with an expiry date. Sectigo is betting that keeping them alive will matter more than selling them one at a time.
AppViewX and the art of staying online
A forgotten certificate can stop a working business. AppViewX turns that small administrative deadline into an automated discipline - and is taking the same idea into AI agent security.
Dave Krauthamer and the art of changing the locks
After building a business that moved companies into the cloud, Dave Krauthamer turned to the encryption holding their networks together. His next problem: how to change the locks while everyone is still inside.
Fortanix asks: who holds the keys to your cloud?
The cloud made computing someone else’s business. Fortanix wants the secrets to remain yours, even while a machine is working on them.
Jmem Tek and the secret a chip does not have to keep
The Taiwanese chip designer turns tiny manufacturing differences into device identities, then pairs them with post-quantum cryptography. Its wager: protecting the key matters as much as choosing the algorithm.
Kostas Chalkias and the Art of Trusting a Machine
An Amstrad in a Greek village led Kostas Chalkias toward the mathematics of trust. Now the Mysten Labs co-founder is asking what cryptography must protect when software starts acting on our behalf.
The Internet Runs on Invisible ID Cards. Keyfactor Wants to Manage Every One.
Certificates quietly decide which machines, workloads, devices, code, and AI agents can be trusted. Keyfactor has spent 25 years turning that hidden machinery into infrastructure security teams can actually see and control.
Vivek Nair
Vivek Nair is the co-founder and CEO of Multifactor (YC F25), an applied cryptography company building zero-trust authentication, authorization, and auditing for AI agents. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley at 22 as a Hertz Fellow, published landmark work on privacy in virtual reality, and served as a technical lead in cyber units at the Department of Defense and CIA before starting the company.
Multifactor
Multifactor is a San Francisco cybersecurity startup, part of Y Combinator's Fall 2025 batch, that lets people and AI agents access online accounts without ever exposing the underlying passwords. Using patented post-quantum cryptography, it turns any account - a bank, an inbox, an internal tool - into a shareable, revocable 'read-only' link, the way Google Docs shares a document. Founded by former CIA cyber officer Vivek Nair and ex-NASA cryptographer Colin Roberts, the company raised a $15M seed round in December 2025 led by Nexus Venture Partners.
Sixscape Communications
Sixscape Communications is a Singapore-based cybersecurity vendor specializing in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) automation and post-quantum readiness. Founded in 2014 by cryptography veteran Lawrence Hughes, the company builds digital certificate-based products for secure email (S/MIME), password-less authentication, IoT device identity and unified communications. Its patented Identity Registration Protocol (IRP), assigned IANA port 4604, automates the request, issuance and management of X.509 certificates so enterprises can deploy trusted digital identities in seconds rather than weeks. Sixscape sells through a 100% partner-centric model spanning system integrators, resellers and certificate authorities, and positions its IDcentral platform for certificate lifecycle management and cryptographic posture management in a market bracing for shorter TLS certificate lifespans and the migration to quantum-safe algorithms.
Binarly
Binarly is a firmware and software supply chain security company that reads the code no one else looks at - the layer below the operating system. Its AI-powered Transparency Platform analyzes firmware binaries to surface known and unknown vulnerabilities, malicious implants, misconfigurations and cryptographic weaknesses, then builds a genuine software bill of materials by reconstructing dependencies from the binary itself rather than trusting a manifest. Founded in 2021 by veteran reverse engineers Alex Matrosov and Claudiu Teodorescu, the company has disclosed hundreds of high-impact firmware vulnerabilities, including the widely covered PKfail Secure Boot flaw.
QuSecure
QuSecure is a San Mateo, California cybersecurity company that helps organizations defend against the threat that quantum computers pose to today's encryption. Its flagship platform, QuProtect, is a crypto-agility layer that discovers an organization's cryptographic assets and lets them migrate to NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptography without ripping out existing infrastructure or rewriting code. Founded in 2019 and led by CEO Rebecca Krauthamer, QuSecure has demonstrated quantum-resilient communications over live satellite links, won U.S. Army and Air Force contracts, and was named a 2026 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer.
Rebecca Krauthamer
Rebecca Krauthamer is the co-founder and CEO of QuSecure, a San Mateo company building software that lets governments and banks swap out their encryption before quantum computers learn to break it. A Stanford Symbolic Systems graduate who jumped from AI to quantum in 2017, she turned a U.S. Air Force grant into a Series A-funded leader in post-quantum cryptography, counting the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Banco Sabadell among its users. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and World Economic Forum council member, she argues cybersecurity is a mission for humanity, not just a product category.