Halfway through 2026, one metric stands out: our Cybersecurity Practice Group has grown its client roster by more than 400% year-over-year. Growth like that doesn't come from any single win. It happens when the market shifts, and this time, cybersecurity is where it’s showing up first.

Companies in the Series B through pre-IPO stage increasingly want a PR partner that scales with them through funding, product improvements, and exit milestones, rather than an agency that runs a one-off campaign and moves on. They're choosing senior teams embedded in the day-to-day over raw headcount and infrastructure. We see those expectations across all five of our practice groups, but cybersecurity is the leading indicator.

Why Cybersecurity Is the Clearest Signal

Cybersecurity is one of the most crowded, competitive markets in B2B tech, where generic PR gets exposed quickly. Our roster now includes KnowBe4, Intruder, Filigran, and ThreatDown: venture- and private equity-backed companies that selected us for specialized market knowledge rather than general-purpose capacity.

“The cybersecurity market rewards domain expertise, not generalists learning on the job,” says Matt Grant, EVP and head of our Cybersecurity and Enterprise Practice Groups. “Earned media must excel at its core purpose while also fueling the AI engines that shape how cybersecurity buyers discover, evaluate, and trust vendors. Whether they're venture-backed, private equity-backed, public, or privately held, our clients need a partner that can punch above its weight on both fronts.”

That evolution in how earned media creates value has accelerated over the past year. When a CISO asks ChatGPT or Gemini to compare vendors, the AI tool draws from earned media, analyst coverage, and third-party validation, not the vendor's own landing pages. In a category this crowded, the companies that appear consistently in AI-generated responses tend to have built a foundation of recent, credible third-party coverage.

The same forces are reshaping whom buyers trust, not just how they search. Independent newsletters, podcasts, and creator-led publications have become trusted sources for practitioners, CISOs, and security buyers. These sources are also increasingly part of the information ecosystem that AI assistants use to answer buyer questions.

That’s why we launched the Cybersecurity Creator Media Leaderboard®, which ranks the top 50 independent voices shaping security buyers' decisions. For communications leaders, understanding how buyers discover and evaluate vendors is becoming just as important as building relationships with traditional media.

Investing Where Our Clients Are Growing

The changes we're seeing are even influencing how we continue to build Treble. This month, we expanded into Chicago, placing senior practitioners closer to one of the country's largest concentrations of late-stage B2B technology companies.

“Expanding into Chicago enables Treble to have senior-level team members closer to a major hub of late-stage B2B technology companies,” says Ethan Parker, Treble's founder and CEO. “Treble was built to scale with companies from Series B through a premium exit or IPO, and this year's growth confirms that's where market demand is concentrating.”

Cybersecurity may be our fastest-growing practice today, but we see the same buying patterns emerging across enterprise technology, AI, hardtech, and venture capital. Companies want experienced partners who understand their markets, stay embedded in the business, and build the third-party credibility that influences both human buyers and AI-powered discovery.

If you're building an earned-media program that drives category leadership and AI-search visibility, we’d love to continue the conversation.