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AWS, Nvidia, Crowdstrike seek security startups to enter the arena. Last year's winner scored a $65M funding round on a $300M valuation. Cloud and AI security startups have two weeks to apply for a program that fast-tracks access to investors and mentors from Amazon Web Services, CrowdStrike, and Nvidia. The highly competitive Cybersecurity Startup Accelerator, now in its third year, is accepting applications from early-stage startups through November 15. Last year, hundreds applied and just 23 made the cut. This year's accelerator seeks companies developing technologies around cloud and application security, identity, agentic security, and data security, all of which become increasingly important - and challenging - as organizations seek to integrate AI into their business processes and deploy agents. As such, startups developing agentic AI security tech, especially around agent governance and agent identity security, are in high demand this year. "The program is our way to give back to the cybersecurity community - helping promising startups thrive as they tackle real challenges in securing AI, cloud, and data," Daniel Bernard, chief business officer at CrowdStrike, told The Register. "This year, we're opening applications globally to tap the best ideas from around the world, and we expect another highly competitive class of companies." The first accelerator focused on startups from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and last year expanded to include US-based firms. Startups selected to participate get access to cloud, compute, and threat-intel resources from AWS, Nvidia, and CrowdStrike, plus the chance to get in front of cybersecurity investors and technical experts.  The program runs from January 5 through March 3, and at the end of the eight-week session, founders get to pitch their companies to investors and industry experts at AWS' Demo Day in San Francisco on March 24 – during the annual RSA Conference. Companies with "outstanding presentations" may receive funding from CrowdStrike's investment arm, Falcon Fund. To date, 59 startups have graduated from the accelerator and collectively raised more than $730 million after completing the program. Some of them have gone on to strike multi-million-dollar deals with the companies powering the accelerator or land massive funding rounds after the program ends. CrowdStrike in August reached a $290 million deal to acquire one of these graduates, Onum, which provides real-time data telemetry.  The 2023–2024 cohort winner endpoint security shop Remedio (formerly called GYTPOL) now counts AWS and Check Point as customers, and in September, announced a $65 million funding round at a $300 million valuation.