Even as digital and physical threats reach record levels, advances in security and privacy are giving us stronger defenses than ever before. New tools can now scan the wireless spectrum to flag hidden risks, protect faces and voices from AI misuse, map out who has access to sensitive data in real time, and guard large language models against. prompt injection and data leaks. Together, these innovations are reshaping how we safeguard both our information and our personal safety.
Bastille Networks
For keeping tabs on airborne threats
Wireless signals are more crowded than ever, from Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to 5G and beyond—and the data they carry is as valuable as anything sent over fiber. That makes them an appealing target for attackers. Bastille’s platform uses software-defined radio and AI to map the wireless environment in real time, detect threats, and trigger instant alerts while integrating with major security platforms such as XDR, CAASM, SIEM, SOAR, and Zero Trust systems. Based in Santa Cruz, California, the company holds 34 patents, with more pending, and has tripled its annual recurring revenue in the past year. Its customers include Fortune 500 firms, government agencies, and military units, with deployments already protecting 5 million square feet of intelligence community facilities. In its most recent Series C round, Goldman Sachs joined Bessemer Venture Partners to invest $44 million.
Loti AI
For helping people control their name, image, and likeness in the AI era
How do you keep control over your face in the age of AI? Loti AI does it at scale with a massive network of tens of thousands of servers that collectively scan everything uploaded to the internet each day. The three-year-old Seattle-based company’s system combines large-scale web crawling; multimodal detection across voice, image, and video; and an automated rights-enforcement layer tailored to the entertainment and media industry. Loti AI reports a 95% takedown success rate within 17 hours. With regulatory momentum from the proposed No Fakes Act, $16 million in new funding from Khosla Ventures, and partnerships across media and security, the company has also launched a free app for individuals.
Pangea
For keeping LLMs safe and secure
As companies adopt LLMs and AI-driven applications, protecting the data flowing through them has become a critical concern. Pangea’s AI Guard acts as a proxy that developers can access via API, sitting between applications and the LLM or agent to defend against advanced prompt injection attacks such as token smuggling and multilingual exploits. Its suite of tools—including sensors and a Chrome extension—lets administrators monitor for sensitive-data leakage while applying native access controls for agentic and RAG systems. To keep latency low, Pangea uses smaller LLMs to flag malicious or inappropriate content and prevent confidential data from entering models. The four-year-old startup, which pivoted from cloud security after the rise of ChatGPT, was acquired by security giant CrowdStrike in September 2025.
Vezha
For monitoring access and privileges in real time
As apps, databases, and agents proliferate, companies are hard-pressed to know who has access to what, what they can do with that access, and whether they should even have it. While traditional identity governance tools rely on static roles and manual processes, Veza’s “identity security platform” looks at authorization metadata in real time—the data that governs what users and machines can actually do across apps, infrastructure, and data systems, from AWS and Salesforce to Active Directory and Snowflake—to build a dynamic graph of permissions across human and nonhuman identities. That hands admins more fine-grained visibility and control through risk detection, least privilege analysis, just-in-time access, and real-time access reviews. Founded five years ago in Los Gatos, California, Veza more than doubled sales last year and raised $108 million this spring in a round backed by Atlassian, Snowflake, and Workday, valuing the company at $800 million.
The companies and individuals behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2025. Read more about the winners across all categories and the methodology behind the selection process.
