AI vs. AI: why Quantro Security is building defense for the era of AI-native offense

Mehul spent over 20 years building cybersecurity products, including early time at Tenable where he watched the company scale from a scrappy startup to a billion-dollar platform. Now he's co-founding Quantro Security, which just came out of stealth with an AI agent platform built specifically for cyber defense. The core thesis: AI has reduced the cost of building attacks to near zero, and static rules-based defense tools weren't built for what's coming.

Topics Discussed:

• How AI reduced the cost of exploit development and what that means for defenders

• Why Quantro Security rejects CTEM, risk-based VM, and every existing category

• The "user interface of record" positioning vs. the "system of record" frame most AI companies chase

• Three competitive buckets: hyperscalers, siloed point tools, and internal build teams

• Why agents should be prompting humans, not the other way around

• The vision for a small elite security team managing 50 to 100 purpose-built AI agents

Key Insights:

• AI-native offense requires AI-native defense. Mehul's core thesis isn't speculative — it's built on what he watched happen to his own craft. Writing vulnerability exploits once required deep skill and months of work. AI collapsed that barrier. "So now an attacker can essentially build a functional exploit with just a prompt." The implication for defenders is direct: the tools built for the old pace won't be sufficient for the new one.

• Rejecting every existing category. When Quantro came out of stealth, the obvious move was to slot into CTEM or risk-based vulnerability management. Mehul passed. "Are you a CTEM player? Are you a risk-based VM player? Are you VM player? Well, no, no, no, none of that." The existing categories imply replacing tools. Quantro's frame is different: become the connective layer on top of what customers already have.

• User interface of record, not system of record. Most AI companies pitch replacing core platforms. Quantro's pitch is the opposite: "We don't replace the tools. We just make their existing tools much more, much more effective." Enterprises aren't ripping out entrenched infrastructure. They want ROI from what they've already bought.

• The barbell competitive map. Mehul frames the landscape as a barbell: hyperscalers ("a mile wide, a millimeter deep") on one end, siloed point tools (deep in their own data, blind to organizational context) on the other. Quantro positions as the connective tissue between them.

• The 50% false positive tax. When Mehul talks to security prospects, the same reality surfaces: "Almost 50 % of the time is triaging false positives, reaching out to the people." Asset ownership is unclear. Handoffs break down. None of it moves the risk needle. The agents absorb that work.

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