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NeuralTrust is the best-positioned European platform recognised in the Pioneer quadrant of Gartner's first-ever research framework dedicated to AI Application Security.
BARCELONA, September 2026 /NeuralTrust/. NeuralTrust, the platform for securing and scaling AI agents, today announced it has been named a Pioneer in the Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security. NeuralTrust is the best positioned European-headquartered company in this quadrant, reinforcing its position as the leading AI security platform built for the era of autonomous agents.
The Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security represents a significant milestone for the cybersecurity industry: it is Gartner's first dedicated research framework evaluating startup vendors specifically in the AI Application Security category.
Pioneer status recognises vendors that demonstrate architecturally advanced approaches to AI security, offering comprehensive coverage across the full lifecycle of agentic applications, from discovery and posture management to automated testing and real-time runtime defence.
"Being named a Pioneer in Gartner's first AI Application Security quadrant validates what we have been building since day one," said Joan Vendrell, Co-Founder and CEO of NeuralTrust.
"AI applications and autonomous agents introduce a fundamentally different risk surface, one that traditional security tools were never designed to address. We built NeuralTrust to be the security layer that sits between enterprise AI and the threats that target it, and this recognition reflects the depth and breadth of what we have shipped."
What is the Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant and Why Is It Important?
The Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant is distinct from the Gartner Magic Quadrant. It is designed for nascent but rapidly growing markets where the competitive landscape is still forming and where vendor differentiation is driven by innovation and architectural depth rather than execution scale alone.
The AI Application Security category encompasses platforms that protect AI-powered applications, large language models, and autonomous AI agents against adversarial attacks, data exfiltration, model manipulation, and prompt injection, threats that do not exist in traditional software security and cannot be addressed by conventional tools.
Gartner defines the AI application security market as technologies that protect enterprise-developed AI applications and agents by combining security testing, exposure management, and runtime defence to detect, alert, or block threats. Three core capabilities define this market: automated discovery and inventory of AI applications, automated AI security testing including adversarial prompting and model repository scanning, and AI runtime defence that monitors inputs and outputs in real time.
The publication of this first Vendors quadrant is itself a signal: Gartner analysts now consider AI Application Security a sufficiently distinct and mature market to warrant its own dedicated research framework, separate from broader application security and AI governance evaluations.
Europe's Leading AI Application Security Platform
NeuralTrust is headquartered in Barcelona and operates offices in London and New York, making it the best positioned European-headquartered platform in this quadrant. For European enterprises navigating AI security alongside GDPR obligations, NCSC compliance requirements, the EU AI Act, and data sovereignty mandates, NeuralTrust provides a platform designed from the ground up to operate within European regulatory frameworks.
The London office, opened in September 2026 at 167 Great Portland Street, serves as NeuralTrust's hub for UK customers, partners, and hiring, supporting a growing base of financial services, technology, and enterprise clients across the region.
"European enterprises face the same urgency as their counterparts in the United States when it comes to AI agent security, and they carry additional compliance obligations that platforms built outside the EU were never designed to address," said Cameron Brown, UK Managing Director at NeuralTrust.
"Being the only European Pioneer in Gartner's first AI Application Security quadrant is a clear signal that the region now has a platform purpose-built for its security and regulatory needs."
The Platform Behind the Recognition
Pioneer recognition in the Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant reflects architecturally advanced capabilities across the full lifecycle of AI applications and agent deployments. NeuralTrust's platform covers this lifecycle from a single deployment:
- TrustGate is an AI gateway that enforces security policy on every prompt and completion in real time: prompt injection detection, content filtering, token budgets, rate limiting, and intelligent routing across model providers, TrustGate provides the entry-point control layer that every AI deployment should have before a request reaches a model.
- TrustGuard is the first runtime security mesh extensible to every AI agent, monitoring tool calls, Model Context Protocol (MCP) connections, and agent reasoning across any platform without requiring per-agent custom integrations. It enforces intent-based policy, detects behavioural anomalies, and maintains audit trails for every AI interaction.
- TrustLens provides agent posture management: continuous discovery and inventory of every AI agent across the organisation, mapping permissions and tool access, and scoring risk posture continuously. It answers the questions that must be resolved before runtime controls can be meaningful: what AI applications are running, what data they can access, and whether their posture is within policy.
- TrustTest automates AI red teaming by probing LLM applications against the full OWASP LLM Top 10, including prompt injection, jailbreak, data extraction, indirect context manipulation, and model manipulation attack patterns. Findings from TrustTest feed directly into TrustGuard policy configuration, creating a closed-loop architecture between security testing and runtime enforcement.
This unified, closed-loop approach (covering posture management, adversarial testing, and runtime defence from a single platform) is precisely the architectural direction that Gartner analysts identify as defining the Pioneer category in AI Application Security.
Building on a Year of Gartner Recognition
The Emerging Market Quadrant Pioneer designation adds to a body of Gartner recognition that spans multiple research areas in 2026. NeuralTrust has also been named:
- A Sample Vendor in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Application Security 2026
- A Sample Vendor in the Gartner Hype Cycle for AI Governance Technologies 2026, in the AI Runtime Defence category
- A Sample Vendor in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Security 2026
- A Sample Vendor in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Data Security 2026
NeuralTrust has also been recognized in the Gartner Market Guides:
This breadth of coverage spanning application security, AI governance, and infrastructure security reflects the cross-cutting nature of the AI security problem. Securing AI agents is not a single-layer challenge. It requires controls at the gateway, at runtime, at the posture layer, and at the testing layer.
NeuralTrust is the only platform recognised by Gartner across all four Hype Cycle research areas in the same year, and now the only European platform in the Pioneer quadrant of the first dedicated AI Application Security framework.
FAQs about the Gartner EMQ for AI Application Security
1. What is the Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security?
The Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security is a research framework published by Gartner analysts that evaluates startup vendors in the nascent but rapidly growing AI Application Security market. Unlike the Gartner Magic Quadrant, which evaluates established markets with mature competitive dynamics, the Emerging Market Quadrant focuses on markets where the competitive landscape is still forming and vendor differentiation is driven by innovation.
This is Gartner's first dedicated framework for this category. It identifies vendors driving the development of platforms that protect AI-powered applications, large language models, and autonomous AI agents against adversarial threats including prompt injection, data exfiltration, model manipulation, and agent misuse.
2. What does Pioneer status mean in a Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant?
The Pioneer position in a Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant recognises vendors that demonstrate architecturally advanced approaches to securing AI applications, offering comprehensive coverage across the full lifecycle of agentic deployments.
Pioneers are characterised by integrated capabilities spanning security posture management, automated adversarial testing, and real-time runtime defence and by an architectural direction toward unified, closed-loop systems that enable organisations to detect, prevent, and respond to complex risks in agentic AI environments.
For NeuralTrust, Pioneer recognition reflects the depth and integration of TrustGate, TrustGuard, TrustLens, and TrustTest working as a single platform rather than disconnected point solutions.
3. Why is NeuralTrust described as the leading European platform in this quadrant?
NeuralTrust is the best-positioned European platform recognised in the Pioneer quadrant of the Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security. Headquartered in Barcelona, with offices in London and New York, NeuralTrust was built from the ground up to operate within European regulatory frameworks including GDPR, the EU AI Act, and NCSC compliance requirements.
For European enterprises evaluating AI security platforms, this matters: data sovereignty, jurisdictional routing, and EU-aligned audit trails are first-class requirements in NeuralTrust's architecture, not features added after the fact.
4. How does AI Application Security differ from traditional application security?
Traditional application security addresses vulnerabilities in software code, APIs, and infrastructure (SQL injection, cross-site scripting, authentication weaknesses, and misconfigured cloud resources).
AI Application Security addresses a different class of vulnerabilities that are unique to large language models and AI agents:
- Prompt injection: manipulating model behaviour through adversarial input),
- Indirect context manipulation: embedding malicious instructions in retrieved content),
- Model data poisoning, agent tool-call abuse, intent drift: agents pursuing goals outside their defined boundaries)
- Supply chain risks in third-party models and model repositories
These threats require security controls that operate at the AI layer (at the prompt, completion, tool call, and agent reasoning step) rather than at the network or endpoint layer.
About NeuralTrust
NeuralTrust is the leading platform for securing and scaling AI agents. Its platform: TrustGate, TrustGuard, TrustLens, and TrustTest gives security and engineering teams the visibility and control they need to govern AI agents in production. Headquartered in Barcelona with offices in London and New York, NeuralTrust counts global banks, airlines, energy companies, and government agencies among its customers. The company is recognised by Gartner, KuppingerCole, SACR, and MarketsandMarkets. ISO 27001 certified.
Media Contact: Rodrigo Fernández Baón (rodrigo.fernandez@neuraltrust.ai)
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