AIxCYBER
The $119 Billion Bet.
Why Agentic AI Just Made Cybersecurity the Most Strategic and Valuable Market in Tech
AIxCYBER
- Conference & Cocktails
Date: March 12, 2026
Time: 4 to 7pm
Location: South Congress Hotel, Austin (Directions)
Audience: AI & Cybersecurity executives, CISO, VCs, PE investors, entrepreneurs, M&A and corporate development leaders
Format: A lively happy hour with entertainment & drinks followed by an engaging fireside chat panel with audience Q&A
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The 2026 Cybersecurity Almanac documented the most active year in cybersecurity history. Ninety-six billion dollars in M&A. More than 330 AI security vendors founded in under three years. Strategic buyers commanding 92 percent of deal value. But headline numbers are symptoms, not causes.
AIxCYBER brings together the builders, buyers, and backers shaping what comes next for an afternoon that unpacks the three forces driving the cybersecurity super cycle and what they mean for every decision-maker in the room.
The Three Forces.
The AI Landscape Shock
Artificial intelligence has compressed a decade of disruption into three years. It is simultaneously the threat and the opportunity, and it has produced the fastest subsector formation in Cybersecurity history.
The Architectural Divide
AI workloads don’t land on a blank canvas. They land on enterprise architectures that were already fracturing across multi-cloud, hybrid, and edge environments. The structural gap between deployment velocity and security enforcement is why consolidation is structural, not cyclical.
The Financial Environment
Record M&A, a two-tier public market, capital concentrating in fewer and larger rounds, and an IPO window set to reopen. The financial environment is the mechanism through which the first two forces translate into outcomes for every company in Cybersecurity.
Moderator
Eric McAlpine
Founder & CEO, Momentum Cyber
A two-time founder, award-winning engineer, and highly sought-after speaker, Eric McAlpine is a top dealmaker in Cybersecurity having spent the last 27 years as a strategic advisor to Boards, Founders & CEOs. Eric founded and leads Momentum Cyber, the premier trusted strategic advisor to the Cybersecurity industry.
The Panel
Chairman & CEO, Aviatrix
Former CEO of Splunk, where he scaled the company from $100M to $3B in annual recurring revenue and led its cloud transformation. Doug brings the platform builder’s lens on how large-scale acquirers evaluate and absorb innovation.
CEO & Founder, TENEX.AI
Three-time CISO turned founder backed by a16z, TENEX surpassed $10M in revenue within its first six months building the AI-native SOC. Eric represents the high-velocity disruptor rewriting security operations at machine speed.
CEO & Founder, Snowfire AI
Drawing on more than twenty years in cybersecurity at Deepwatch, Rackspace, Intel471, and as a founding employee of RH-ISAC, Greg is building Adaptive Decision Intelligence at the frontier of AI and executive decision-making.
Partner, Live Oak Ventures
An early-stage venture capital investor, LiveOak Ventures has helped create nearly $5 billion in enterprise value through a complete life-cycle investing strategy.