Horizon3 Surpasses $100 Million ARR with 120% YoY Growth

Horizon3 announced on October 20, 2026, that it has surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue. The AI-native proactive security company achieved this financial milestone while maintaining 95% gross dollar retention and 125% net dollar retention rates. This growth reflects sustained adoption of its NodeZero platform for continuous, production-safe autonomous penetration testing.

The company credits early investment in channel partnerships and a methodical evolution from a single product to a comprehensive platform for this expansion. According to Horizon3, operational excellence allowed the firm to balance growth with efficiency during varying economic cycles. The $100 million ARR mark represents a significant increase from the $1 million ARR the company recorded in September 2021.

Strategic Expansion and Platform Evolution

Horizon3 initially focused on solving the challenge of autonomously pentesting internal production systems. This capability provided access to high-value cyber training data located behind customer firewalls. The company subsequently expanded its attack surface testing to include external networks, cloud environments, Kubernetes clusters, and web applications. All testing is conducted safely within production environments.

The firm has also expanded into adjacent cybersecurity budgets by auto-deploying deception based on identified attack paths. This strategy drives continuous threat exposure management workflows and agentic remediation workflows via blue-team agents. Deception technology is resurging in relevance due to its effectiveness against agentic attackers, according to the company’s statement.

Future Investment Priorities

Snehal Antani, co-founder and CEO of Horizon3, stated that the exploit window for vulnerabilities is collapsing. Frontier AI models are converting newly disclosed weaknesses into working attack paths faster than traditional testing cycles can respond. To stay ahead of this shift, Horizon3 is investing in three specific areas for its next phase of growth.

First, the company is expanding sovereign cyber AI regions to support data residency requirements. This allows organizations to run high-frequency, in-scope testing similar to what more than 7,000 existing customers use. Second, Horizon3 is building cyber resilience centers of excellence across critical infrastructure sectors. These centers support a closed-loop model of hacking, fixing, verifying, and repeating at scale.

Third, the firm is advancing attack-defend AI learning loops. Every production test improves subsequent tests, turning the volume of real-world attack paths generated across hundreds of thousands of tests into a durable advantage. This approach helps cybersecurity professionals prioritize exploitable vulnerabilities and verify the effectiveness of their security controls.

What should you do?

Organizations should evaluate their current penetration testing frequency and consider shifting toward continuous exposure management practices. Security teams should verify that their testing solutions operate safely within production environments without disrupting operations. Review vendor capabilities for sovereign AI regions if data residency compliance is a requirement for your industry. Monitor how vendors integrate agentic remediation and deception technologies into their defensive workflows.

Background: Deception technology

Avoid placing decoys in isolated networks, using static configurations, or ignoring high-fidelity triggers. Align deception with threat models, rotate assets regularly, and integrate alerts directly into your detection engineering workflows to ensure responders act on genuine compromises.

Read the full guide: Deception Technology Mistakes That Create False Sense of Security

What to do and how to stay safe: Horizon3

• Assess whether your current penetration testing cycles align with the speed of AI-driven threat exploitation.
• Verify that your security tools can operate within customer-defined scope and guardrails in production systems.
• Check if your vendor supports data residency requirements through sovereign AI regions or local deployment options.
• Evaluate the integration of automated remediation and deception capabilities in your existing security stack.

Step-by-step guide: Social Engineering Warning Signs and How to Respond

General security guidance from the Threat Times newsroom. It is not confirmed advice from the organisations named in this story.

Frequently asked questions

How much did Horizon3's annual recurring revenue grow year over year?

Horizon3 reported that its ARR grew more than 120% year over year, surpassing the $100 million milestone.

What is the net dollar retention rate for Horizon3?

The company reported a net dollar retention rate of 125% alongside 95% gross dollar retention.

How many customers are using Horizon3's testing capabilities?

More than 7,000 customers are currently using the high-frequency, in-scope testing provided by Horizon3.