In this interview from RSAC 2026, Anand Eswaran, chief executive officer of Veeam, joins theCUBE's Dave Vellante and Christophe Bertrand to discuss why the infrastructure for deploying AI has far outpaced the infrastructure for trusting it. Eswaran outlines three inflection points reshaping security: the explosion of unstructured data as attack surface, a fundamental shift in the control point from endpoints to data itself, and autonomous agents operating at machine speed without adequate trust mechanisms. These forces are driving Veeam's evolution from a data resilience leader into what he calls the trusted data platform for the agentic enterprise.
The conversation also explores how Veeam's acquisition of Securiti AI is unifying historically discrete domains — data security, privacy, compliance, governance and resilience — into a single control plane anchored by a multi-domain knowledge graph. Eswaran details how the Data Command Graph connects to more than 300 data systems, mapping relationships between data elements, identities, policies and agents to ensure clean data enters AI pipelines before problems occur. He shares strong financial metrics, including $2 billion in annual recurring revenue and 30% EBITDA margins, positioning Veeam near Rule of 50 territory as it approaches a future IPO. The discussion also touches on Veeam's active role in shaping U.S. cybersecurity policy through partnerships with the White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as the challenge of navigating divergent global regulatory frameworks. From precision resilience that can surgically undo agent mistakes to a unified platform that demystifies complex compliance landscapes, Eswaran provides a roadmap for how enterprises can secure their AI transformations without stifling innovation.
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In this interview from RSAC 2026, Anand Eswaran, chief executive officer of Veeam, joins theCUBE's Dave Vellante and Christophe Bertrand to discuss why the infrastructure for deploying AI has far outpaced the infrastructure for trusting it. Eswaran outlines three inflection points reshaping security: the explosion of unstructured data as attack surface, a fundamental shift in the control point from endpoints to data itself, and autonomous agents operating at machine speed without adequate trust mechanisms. These forces are driving Veeam's evolution from a dat...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
What are the key inflection points driving the big changes brought by AI, and how is that shaping Veeam's evolution?add
Is Veeam expanding its platform—through acquisitions into areas like governance and data management—to unify previously discrete technologies around data and evolve from a data protection company into a trusted data platform?add
How does Veeam’s acquisition of Securiti AI change Veeam’s positioning and what capabilities does the new unified platform (Agent Commander / data command graph) provide for detecting AI risk, data governance, and precision recovery?add
What are Veeam's recent financial metrics, market position, and strategic vision for data resilience and AI?add
Is Veeam planning to go public in the near future, and if so, why and when would you pursue an IPO?add
>> Hi, everybody. Welcome back to San Francisco. We're here in Moscone West at the ground floors. You stop by and see us. You're watching theCUBE's continuous coverage. This is day two of RSAC 2026. My name is Dave Vellante. I'm here with Christophe Bertrand. The keynotes are getting started. You can see people filing in. Anand Eswaran is here. He's the CEO of Veeam. Good to see you again. Thanks for coming on.
Anand Eswaran
>> Dave, Christophe, always a pleasure. Enjoy the conversations.
Dave Vellante
>> You were at New York Stock Exchange with Jon talking about Agent Commander, and then you and I were talking about data currency last year. Great sort of framework that you had with backup on security, and AI governance and resilience is obviously a big theme. Anand, things are changing so fast. We were at GTC last week, and it's two weeks, three weeks later, everything's going to evolve and change. Give us the update on Veeam. What's the big message for customers here?
Anand Eswaran
>> Yeah. No, things are changing. Everyone talks about AI, but I just go back to probably three inflection points on why we have such a big change. Obviously, everything starts with data. The world of BI was powered by structured data. The world of AI is powered by unstructured data, which is 90% of all the data. And so, your attack surface has just significantly exploded instantly. That's one. The second inflection point for me in terms of context is the control point is shifting. Historically, when we said "security," we talked about endpoints, protect your endpoints, protect the perimeter, protect the identities, protect the network. Now, you take your data to AI, different from bringing the apps down to your data. So when you do that, you've shifted the control point to data, understanding data at a very finite level. And that brings me to the final thing, which is, my punchline here is, the infrastructure for deploying AI has fast outpaced the infrastructure for trusting AI. You have autonomous agents acting at machine speed. If you do not have a way to make sure the data feeding those agents is trusted, it's got the right identity permissions, you have a problem. These are the three things which come together in a pretty big way and shape where Veeam is going. And I'll tell you what Veeam's evolution is in a punchline, from a focus on data resilience, which is still very critical, to I think of Veeam as the trusted data platform for the agentic enterprise.
Dave Vellante
>> I mean, everybody wants to talk about models, LLMs, GPUs, me included, by the way. It's amazing what's happening, but not enough people are talking about data, data security, data resilience. Is data kind of the new perimeter, to sort of throw in a tongue-in-cheek
Anand Eswaran
>> Yeah, yeah. No, I say security is now data-centric. That's how I frame it in our head. And a lot of people are talking about, you need power, you need GPUs, you need infrastructure. That is a given, but that is not going to be the constraint which prevents companies using AI for effective transformation. And then a lot of people talk about, what do you do with agents? Even in our category, our competitors talk about, "Hey, we can govern the agent. We can monitor the agent." That's already too late. You've got to go one level deeper. You got to take a step back and say, "How do you understand the data at great depth?" Not at a file level, not at a S3 bucket level, not at a database level, but you've got to understand the data element, the role, the column, database, and what that means. And then you have to understand the context of the data. What is the relationship of the data with identities, with policies, with entitlements, with agents, with models? When you get to that level of depth, then you're not just fixing bad agent behavior. You're making sure that the data which gets into the agent context window, before even the agent acts, is absolutely right. You mitigate bad actions, and then you still can undo any agent mistakes, which will happen with precision.
Dave Vellante
>> Christophe, that's where the value is, right? We talk about it all the time.
Christophe Bertrand
>> Exactly. Yeah, let's talk about that. I think there are a couple of dimensions. The first one is obviously you want to understand what data is being used for AI, which is not necessarily something that comes very naturally in a lot of environments. Secondly, what you're bringing up is the fact that agents themselves are now starting to, and maybe people are ahead of their skis, make decisions, consume the data. And at some point they will, and they have already, destroyed data, not just code, but at some point something will happen. We know that it's only a matter of time. So, if you think about this in the concept of agentic AI, what's the difference in your opinion, if I'm a viewer, I'm looking at this and thinking, "So is it data protection or cyber resilience for AI, or AI for cyber resilience?" And then how does that apply to agents that are literally now your personal executive assistant doing stuff for you?
Anand Eswaran
>> That's a great question, Christophe. And in fact, I would say it actually is a super set of even what you said. Because the only way you fundamentally enable the opportunity with AI, which is what is the possibility, what is the productivity, what is the potential, and you make sure that you underwrite the risk with AI, is you have to think about, what is historically discrete domains? Data security, privacy, compliance, governance, and resilience, these are different domains with different tools. The only way you get to the heart of solving this is you unify this into a singular control plane, not patchwork products, not patchwork partnerships. You talked about Jensen Huang and GTC. He used a phrase, which actually is exactly how I think about it. He said, "extreme co-design," and he was talking about extreme co-design in the construct of silicon and software. I talk about extreme co-design in the construct of, the only way to solve this problem and enable opportunity is bring together data security, privacy, compliance, governance, and resilience in one unified plane.
Christophe Bertrand
>> That's interesting because I can see ... So first of all, for people who are not attending, VMworld used to be the Veeam show. I mean, clearly, RSAC has become the Veeam show. There's logos everywhere, so congratulations. Great job. You're very visible. But I'm listening to you. I'm thinking, "Look, you have made acquisitions in a number of areas." You've quoted governance. I don't know that you've made an acquisition yet. Are we talking about expanding the platform into some areas that you're doing some things that you need to do more?
Anand Eswaran
>> Absolutely.
Christophe Bertrand
>> And what you've just described is that essentially the roadmap, this unifying and this really this convergence or confluence of what were discrete markets and technologies, unified by one thing, data. Is that what you're doing?
Anand Eswaran
>> Absolutely. Absolutely, Christophe. So you followed Veeam's trajectory, the data protection company, number one in data resilience by market share, and our journey to be ... Our currency was recovery, I mean, the fastest speeds of recovery. Now, with the acquisition of Securiti AI, which we did last year, we closed the acquisition in December, that is the inflection point for Veeam to be really good at what we did, which is resilience, but evolve to being the trusted data platform in the agentic enterprise. Because with Securiti AI, we get the pieces. Which is, if you go to any analyst report, you will see Securiti AI was the absolute number one by a mile in the spaces of data security, privacy, compliance, and governance, and bring Veeam together, the number one in data resilience, now, and we just closed the acquisition three months back, and we already dropped the first product, which is the platform unification. We called it Agent Commander, which is a simple way for every company to detect AI risk. And we can do that, because we understand data at great depth. We understand the breadth of data across ... And this is key, actually. You have many knowledge graphs in the industry. The data command graph which Securiti does is unique, because one, it's multi-domain. It's not just focused on cloud security or it's not focused on application security. It is a visual representation of everything across data security, privacy, compliance, governance, and now resilience, bringing backup data in, into one unified graph. It connects to 300-plus data systems, the broadest coverage we have. It has depth. It can understand data at a very finite, discrete, granular level, more than anyone can. It can understand the relationships between this data element and identities, policies, enforcements, all of that. And so now, this data command graph and the data command center has become our unified control plane for the unified platform. It pulls in everything from data security all the way through resilience. Why does this matter? One, we make sure the data which feeds the AI pipelines is clean. We don't fix it after the fact. And when things go wrong, Christophe, which it will, we can precision undo. Not a sledgehammer rewind, which basically you take back a day full of operations.
Christophe Bertrand
>> It's surgical, yeah.
Anand Eswaran
>> We can precision undo those five seconds of a specific state of a data element which was done wrong by an agent, because we have this best of breed visibility across the entire data life cycle with this unified platform.
Dave Vellante
>> I love that you brought in the knowledge graph. I mean, it's something that the entire industry is talking about these days, and it's ... Graph has always been, in the security business, something that's relevant, but now it's relevant everywhere, and so it's kind of going mainstream. But I wanted to up-level it and ask you, we didn't really know each other until you joined Veeam. And you've taken Veeam from a ... When you joined, it was a backup company, and you've taken it into the cyber resilience, as you just explained now. We're talking data resilience and security and privacy. You've done some M&A. You've expanded your TAM. This is all under your leadership, and I want you to explain your leadership philosophy, where you've taken the company from, and where you're headed.
Anand Eswaran
>> Absolutely. No, it's been an interesting journey for us at Veeam. By the way, just a couple of numbers to set context for Veeam. We've reached $2 billion in ARR at the end of 2025. We are operating at 30% EBITDA margins. We're growing high teams, and we see that growth actually accelerate as we come into 2026. So you're talking about close to a Rule of 50 Company, and the number one market share in data resilience as we operate it. And now as I look forward, I think about this journey from data protection to data resilience with adjacencies of cyber coming in. Ransomware was a key trigger for that. And now, truly, the foundational layer, I call it again, the trusted data platform for the agentic era, the foundational layer of how data becomes the clean fuel for AI pipelines, and how, based on what we do, you can unleash your AI transformation and not worry about AI risk. That's the journey we are on, sort of foundationally fueling every company's AI transformation.
Dave Vellante
>> So with metrics like that, you're obviously, you could if you wanted to, or you may be close to IPOing. We've talked about in the past. The market's funny right now. You have tariffs. They kind of messed up the market. Now you have the war. Nobody's going out now. They're sort of waiting and seeing. What's your take on the capital markets? How are you feeling about them? How are you feeling about Veeam's preparedness?
Anand Eswaran
>> Absolutely. You said it right. We could have been a public company a couple of years back. I mean, we have the financials to go do that. When we go IPO, which we will, not too far from now, hopefully I've made it vague enough, when we go public, it's not because we need liquidity, like some of the other companies have had to. It is the natural next milestone in our journey, expected to happen not too far from now. It's an interesting time. If you were to look at the bloodbath in February, you would think that the analyst perspective is, the terminal value of software is zero. I think it's overhyped. I think there's work which software companies need to do in the era of AI as we sit right now on the value they create for their customers. But as I look at Veeam, I'm excited because for me, this AI era is actually a tailwind. It's actually a tailwind, because the work we do is what enables software companies and every company in general to be more successful in their AI transformations. So, we sit at this interesting layer between the GPUs and computer chips and the overall data applications, the software applications, and the company apps. We sit in that layer where we basically power the clean data, which is the foundation for every company's success, including the software companies which need to be transforming differently. So, I'm super excited, because when we do decide to enter the public markets, I'm very optimistic that this will be a milestone moment to mark for the industry.
Dave Vellante
>> I mean, the SaaSpocalypse, as they call it, is just hitting anybody who has a software business. It's so ironic, isn't it? On it, we go from, marginal economics of software are a wonderful thing, to how do we find durable capital-intensive businesses? Kind of crazy. But security is one of those areas. I was just looking at some of our partner's ETR data. 85% of the customers that we survey are increasing their security budgets on an average of between 5% and 10%, and it's across the board. Now they have to balance things. They have to balance their AI, their identity, their data security, and so that's a challenge for CISOs. But nonetheless, I mean, my feeling is that security's always been somewhat insulated from these sort of downturns, but that's borne out because it has to be, because you're damaging your potential, risking your reputation, your revenue, your market share, et cetera.
Anand Eswaran
>> So Dave, let me just say one thing to that. You're right. Security has historically been insulated from market dynamics, but if you look forward, security as we know it in the pre-AI world is very different. As I said, it focused on endpoint, perimeter, network, all of that. It's very different from security in an agentic world, where millions of agents are acting at machine speed. And so, this is where you had some of the impacts, even on the security companies, unless they're focused on what they do to enable this agentic transformation. That's why Veeam feels bullish about where we are. It's just historically, security companies can block the perimeter and then show issues when they surface. You need to extend it to acting. You need to have extreme resilience, or precision resilience, added to the security substrate, which is what Veeam does right now for our customers.
Dave Vellante
>> Do you see pressure to change your pricing model or evolve your pricing model? And if so, how so?
Anand Eswaran
>> I don't see pressure to change. Customer behaviors are changing, so as we extend our portfolio, we will have new innovative pricing models to face the reality of the agentic era. There are some elements of pricing which will be the same, like protecting a Microsoft 365 workload, or the beta classification, which comes in the data security, is going to be per terabyte. That is the same, but then, how do you enable companies to innovate on AI, and pricing and economics, unit economics for that, will look slightly different.
Dave Vellante
>> I know you're super busy, got to run, but Christophe, get in your last question.
Christophe Bertrand
>> Yeah. My last question actually takes us maybe a couple of levels back up. I was on LinkedIn. I saw that you endorsed, and full-throated endorsed the sort of national cybersecurity policy this administration has put forward, which doesn't have a lot of detail, candidly, but they never really do. So, back to Dave's earlier point, which is security is very critical. Clearly everybody's investing more. How does it change the game, when the government really sees it as a top priority, a national security, as a matter of fact, priority, and as a leader of one of the vendors literally protecting the economy in many ways through all the customers you have, what's your take on it? Do you see yourself taking more of a role in the D.C. area, being more influential?
Anand Eswaran
>> We are already involved, so it wasn't just an endorsement of the new cybersecurity. My teams are actively involved with the White House, with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, so Director Cairncross, we are involved with Barbaccia, who's the CIO of the federal government, in helping, giving our inputs into helping shape the cybersecurity policy. We are in an era where public/private partnerships is going to be extremely critical in how we sort of shape policies, so that we are in this very delicate balance of, you need enough governance around how companies innovate, but you do not want too much governance because that stifles innovation. Other places are going to actually just let the floodgates in. So, it's a very delicate balance, and we are a very core part of influencing this policy.
Christophe Bertrand
>> Yeah, and quick follow-up on that. Obviously there are other regulations around AI now, especially in Europe. Obviously the European Union likes to regulate, so that's the other side of the panel, and it goes back and forth. What's your take on where Europe is going, and then GDPR sort of set the tone for compliance? What about AI?
Anand Eswaran
>> You see, it's not even Europe at a broad level, right? It's, there's a European framework, GDPR and so on, DORA, but at the same time, there is AI regulations in every country. If you go to the Gulf States, it's different. You go to Saudi Arabia, it's different. And so, you have to ... I mean, the way I think about it is, in our products, as we go through this unified platform, we have a common regulatory framework, which can be applied to the data substrate of every company, so you don't have to worry about it. You can just apply your data to the common frameworks we have in place. It's automatically cataloged. It automatically gives you visibility into governance, compliance, regulation, policy, and making sure that you're compliant, no matter which place your data operates in. So, it is on people like us to make sure that we demystify the increasingly sophisticated and complex regulatory environment for our customers, and I go back to it ... I know you're a lover of science and physics, so I think about this as electricity and magnetism. They were two different sciences until Faraday and Maxwell came together and showed you that electromagnetism is actually the key. Magnetism and electricity were just different expressions of the same principle, and that led to everything we know today, from the fact that you have a QR code, you can scan your phone, and connect to wifi. It's an application of electromagnetism, generators, rotors. I think that we are at a similar construct, where data security, privacy, compliance, governance, resilience is different expressions of one thing. And this is the electromagnetism moment for us as an industry, and we must take the leadership by unifying all of this to become the trusted data platform for the agentic enterprise.
Dave Vellante
>> Well, and congratulations on your leadership. It's so clear what Veeam is doing and where you're headed. Such a strategic thinker and a clear thinker. Really appreciate you coming onto our CEO series, and always a pleasure.
Anand Eswaran
>> Always a pleasure, Dave. Always a pleasure, Christophe. Thank you.
Christophe Bertrand
>> Thank you.
Dave Vellante
>> All right. Thank you for watching. This is theCUBE's coverage of RSAC 2026. Dave Vellante for Christophe Bertrand and Jon Oltsik. We'll be right back, right after this short break from San Francisco.
Dave Vellante
Christophe Bertrand