Bengaluru-based cybersecurity company CloudSEK has launched CloudSEK Launchpad, a 12-week incubation programme for early-stage cybersecurity startups, with each of the 10 companies in its first cohort eligible for up to $5,000 in AI model credits.AdvertismentThe programme was introduced alongside KeyVigil, a new secure gateway designed to control how applications and AIagents connect to frontier AI models. Applications for Launchpad will remain open until November 20, 2026.The credits given to Launchpad startups are KeyVigil credits, which they can use to access frontier AI models through the gateway while building their products.What the startups getCloudSEK said the programme is built around product development, security research and commercial adoption rather than mentorship alone. Selected founders will have weekly interactions with CloudSEK’s leadership across research, product development, enterprise sales and fundraising, including guidance on finding customers, refining products and setting prices.Startups will also get access to CloudSEK’s threat intelligence resources, its researchers and its partner ecosystem, so that they can build products around current threats and real enterprise security needs.It will introduce founders to potential customers and channel partners in India, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region and the United States. The programme ends with a demo day, where founders will pitch to investors and potential customers.Selection runs in four stages: an application, interactions between shortlisted founders and CloudSEK’s leadership, the 12-week incubation, and the demo day.CloudSEK has not disclosed the overall amount it is putting into Launchpad, its selection criteria beyond the stated focus areas, or the commercial terms for access to its enterprise network.Founded in 2015 by Sasi, with Syed Shahrukh Ahmad as co-founder, CloudSEK provides an AI-powered cybersecurity platform designed to identify potential attack paths before cyberattacks occur. Its product portfolio includes XVigil for digital risk protection, BeVigil for external attack surface monitoring, SVigil for third-party risk management, AIVigil and Nexus AI, which connects signals from these tools to identify potential attack paths.Who can applyThe programme is open to pre-seed and seed-stage cybersecurity startups. Founders at the idea stage can also apply if they have a strong team and a clearly defined security problem.CloudSEK said it is particularly interested in startups working on security for AI systems, models and autonomous agents; AI-native security operations and incident response; threat intelligence and digital risk management; identity security, fraud prevention and brand protection; and software supply-chain and code security.“When we started CloudSEK, I wished someone had shown us the shortcuts, which customers to call first, which mistakes cost a year and who to trust,” said Rahul Sasi, Founder and CEO of CloudSEK.“AI has made it significantly easier to build sophisticated technology, but building a successful cybersecurity company still requires access to real threat intelligence, trusted customers and the right industry network. With Launchpad, we want to share what we have learned and help promising founders get to their first ten paying customers,” he said.“The next big security companies will be AI-first from day one. We want to help them get there faster,” Sasi added.What KeyVigil doesKeyVigil is a single gateway through which applications and AI agents can reach several frontier AI models through one endpoint, so developers can switch models without changing their application code. It centrally manages the master API keys used to access AI model providers, so those keys do not have to be stored in application code or development environments.According to the company, the personal information, secrets and customer records are detected and masked before they are sent to a model, and the platform flags and block prompt-injection and jailbreak attempts.KeyVigil was built by the team behind AIVigil, CloudSEK’s AI attack surface monitoring product. AIVigil looks for exposed AI assets from the outside, such as model endpoints, leaked AI credentials and vector databases, while KeyVigil controls the traffic between applications, agents and models.Leaked AI credentials have been a recurring theme in CloudSEK’s research. In August, the company said it had identified more than 2,500 organisations potentially affected by a supply chain compromise involving the LiteLLM software package in March 2026, with 434,000 CI/CD pipelines linked to the exposure.
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