Mark Mcclain SAIL

Chief Executive Officer and Founder, SailPoint, Inc.

SailPoint (SAIL) CEO on Cybersecurity Positioning, AI Agent Growth & Earnings

📅 Sep 14, 2026 Schwab Network 8 MIN 1468 VIEWS 11 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS

SailPoint (SAIL) CEO Mark McClain discusses how his company serves in a "foot on the gas, foot on the brake" dynamic in AI's evolution as renewed safety fears emerge. He outlines SailPoint's earnings beat and how the company's growth reaffirms its positioning as AI agents start to outnumber humans. One of the biggest changes he sees in the cybersecurity space: how AI agents change the way companies view identity verification. ======== Schwab Network ======== Empowering every investor and trader, every market day. Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscri...

What Mark Mcclain said

Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.

Mark McClain, CEO of SailPoint, discussed the company's strong performance and the growing demand for identity security amid AI adoption. He noted that enterprises are moving from pilots to broader adoption in 2026, creating a 'foot on the gas, foot on the brake' dynamic as they balance AI benefits with security concerns, particularly around agentic AI. McClain highlighted SailPoint's 25% ARR growth to $1.23 billion and 36% SaaS ARR growth, attributing this to multiple drivers, including the unsolved human identity problem and the need to secure non-human identities. He cited incidents like Hugging Face and Mithril as examples of agent risks. McClain emphasized that AI-driven pipeline has more than doubled since Investor Day, with customers committing meaningful budgets. He argued that humans will direct agents for the foreseeable future, making human identity understanding crucial. He also discussed the expanded CrowdStrike partnership, positioning SailPoint as providing identity context to security tools.

Key takeaways

SailPoint's AI-driven pipeline has more than doubled since Investor Day less than three months ago, indicating strong customer commitment.
Enterprises are moving from pilots to broader adoption in 2026, creating a 'foot on the gas, foot on the brake' dynamic in AI security.
SailPoint's expanded CrowdStrike partnership brings identity intelligence into the SOC, addressing the 'identity blind' nature of other security tools.
Security budgets are robust, and AI budgets are being leveraged to ensure secure deployments, providing multiple funding sources for SailPoint.

Numbers and commitments

Figure	What it refers to	Type	At
25%	ARR growth	metric	1:24
$1.23 billion	ARR	metric	1:24
36%	SaaS ARR growth	metric	1:24
14%	SailPoint stock increase today	metric	0:00

Chapters

0:00AI disruption and enterprise adoption
1:24Earnings and ARR growth
2:43AI-driven pipeline acceleration
4:03Human vs. non-human identities
5:52CrowdStrike partnership and SOC integration

Questions asked in this interview

0:00Before we dive into your recent earnings and the market reaction, how are you looking at this latest development in the potential AI disruption narrative for software in the cyber space?
1:24What does this quarter tell us about the health of that enterprise demand for identity security?
2:43As you look at that acceleration, is this customers experimenting with AI, or are you really starting to see companies putting more meaningful budgets behind these products?
4:03So at what point does securing these AI agents become the larger business opportunity than simply securing human identities?
5:52And also, is this a broader signal of your strategy going forward to become part of the overall cybersecurity platform rather than operating as a standalone identity product?

Marley 0:00 ↗

Called for a slowdown in the pace of development of AI capabilities, SailPoint participating in the move higher today. The company's founder and CEO, Mark McClain, joining us now. Mark, great to have you on. And what a day for it — I mean, SailPoint is up close to 14% along with other cyber names. I was just talking about Palo Alto Networks, your partner CrowdStrike, also up about 14% today. Before we dive into your recent earnings and the market reaction, how are you looking at this latest development in the potential AI disruption narrative for software in the cyber space?

Mark Mcclain 0:35 ↗

Yeah, it's been an interesting morning, hasn't it? I think what we see is still this large movement in the enterprise space. SailPoint focuses on mid-to-large enterprise customers, a large movement of adoption this year of customers that have been kicking the tires, running pilots, and they're now moving forward to do far more adoption in '26. And as a result, you've got this tension where those enterprises want to take advantage of all the potential and benefits and effectiveness and efficiency from AI, and they've got real valid concerns about the security, particularly of agentic AI, as we've all been reading. So we're feeling that in customer environments, there's this tremendous kind of foot on the gas, foot on the brake dynamic. They want to go fast. They need to trust that they have the proper security controls in place. And SailPoint is a big part of that answer.

Marley 1:24 ↗

All right, Mark, so let's dive into these numbers then. You delivered 25% ARR growth, you're at 1.23 billion. Your SaaS ARR growth was up 36%. What does this quarter tell us about the health of that enterprise demand for identity security?

Mark Mcclain 1:38 ↗

We just continue to see multiple drivers that are really quite healthy, Marley. I think what we see is, first off, there's still a relatively unsolved human problem. While we're all so focused on the non-human world, there's still a lot of challenges in the human world. But what everybody's got an appropriate focus on today is, do we really understand all these non-human identities and what they are capable of doing? And do we have the signals to interpret when they're starting to go off the rails, as we saw with Hugging Face — very different than what we call, you know, the moment here a few months back with Mithril, which was more about how would a bad actor leverage an AI large language model to attack us. With Hugging Face, we saw a very different thing where there was no bad actor involved. These were tools trying to do something with a good intent, but the agents were not necessarily guardrailed, and as a result went off the rails. So we're seeing just multiple ways in which the lack of controls around agents today causes great consternation. As we said, yet companies are saying, 'I've got to get permission for that.' The growth we're seeing, what we think is lots of potential building in the market for more growth, is very strong at this point.

Marley 2:43 ↗

And Mark, one of the things that really stuck out to me in your key takeaways from your earnings was that your AI-driven pipeline has more than doubled since your Investor Day, and that was less than three months ago. So you just mentioned Mithril there. We certainly saw a rise in the need for security. Then we add Hugging Face in there, where this conversation is continuing. As you look at that acceleration, is this customers experimenting with AI, or are you really starting to see companies putting more meaningful budgets behind these products?

6 more exchanges in this transcript

Cite this transcript

APA, MLA, BibTeX

APA

Mcclain, M. (2026, September 14). SailPoint (SAIL) CEO on Cybersecurity Positioning, AI Agent Growth & Earnings [Interview transcript]. Schwab Network. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3025707/

MLA

Mark Mcclain. "SailPoint (SAIL) CEO on Cybersecurity Positioning, AI Agent Growth & Earnings." Schwab Network, 14 Sep. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3025707/.

BibTeX

@misc{mcclain2026_3025707,
  author       = {Mark Mcclain},
  title        = {SailPoint (SAIL) CEO on Cybersecurity Positioning, AI Agent Growth \& Earnings},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, Schwab Network. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {sep},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3025707/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}

▶

Key Quotes (2)

“The sheer volume and number of agents will no doubt non-human identities and agents in particular, will outnumber human identities. We see that, if not already true, rapidly evolving to be true in almost every company we deal with. What we think is kind of unique from our perspective, though, is that people often lose sight of the fact that these agents are going to be directed by humans for the f”

▶ 4:33

“We've been looking at security through various lenses for many decades now. We've looked through the lens of the network. There have been network security products for decades, device or endpoint security, cloud security, mobile device. Various flavors of security that we're all pretty familiar with. And there are dominant players in a lot of those subsegments. I just mentioned identity as an orga”

▶ 6:25

Mentioned in this interview

CrowdStrike CRWD: Partner; expanded partnership to put SailPoint identity intelligence into the SOC.

Palo Alto Networks PANW: Mentioned as a cyber name also up about 14% today.

Hugging Face None-Hugging Face: Example of agents going off the rails without bad actors, due to lack of guardrails.

Mithril: Earlier incident about bad actors leveraging AI large language models to attack.

Amodei: Commentary this morning contributed to security stocks being up.

Earlier, on the same topics

“I think partly what's happening is kind of three dimensions of the identity landscape that I think are changing pretty dramatically today, Cole. I think one is we would call it I guess scale which is just the sheer volume the volume of identities the volume of those entitlements of those identities ”

non-human identities · Dec 17, 2025 at 0:15 →

“I think at the end of the day there is a sense that people want to automate and streamline things while maintaining security and that's the tension right. There's a tension that's existed forever in the realm of technology which is convenience and things go fast and easy is what business users want ”

Feb 21, 2025 at 4:22 →

“We're one of those companies that gets to answer the question is, is AI good for you or bad for you? And the answer is yes to one of those four questions. Right. Like, the truth is it's going to help those of us that are in the security industry do what we do better and more effectively. It's also g”

Jun 12, 2025 at 2:38 →

“You've got to begin to get your arms around the importance of identity as a fundamental control point, a fundamental lens for understanding security in the organization. It's not to the exclusion of others. I think sometimes people hear are saying oh you know it's not important to have firewalls. Of”

identity security · Sep 11, 2025 at 37:42 →

Every Mark Mcclain interview →

More interviews with Mark Mcclain

Mark McClain, SailPoint | SailPoint Navigate 2026Oct 06, 2026 · SiliconANGLE theCUBE · 21 min
The Truth About Rogue Agents — with SailPoint CEO Mark McClainSep 21, 2026 · CRN · 23 min
Identity Matters with Fran Rosch, Imprivata President and CEOApr 13, 2026 · SailPoint · 48 min
Mark McClain – CEO of SailPoint | From Startup to $BillionsJan 29, 2026 · SVC@SXSW · 9 min
S2, E4: Identity Matters with Sudhakar Ramakrishna, SolarWinds CEOJan 07, 2026 · SailPoint · 49 min
Are we in an identity crisis? SailPoint CEO Mark McClain on AI and the future of identity securityDec 17, 2025 · SailPoint · 17 min

All Mark Mcclain transcripts →

About Mark Mcclain

Mark McClain, founder and CEO of SailPoint Technologies, discussed the company's shift from administrative identity governance toward real-time identity security for AI-driven enterprises during recent appearances. At SailPoint Navigate 2026, he described the evolution from lifecycle management and periodic compliance checks to continuous evaluation of context and intent for non-human and agentic identities. He cited the Hugging Face incident as an example where initially benign agents began acting in unintended ways, and argued that agents are not fully autonomous but operate under guardrails set by humans. McClain also noted that non-human identities will outnumber human ones, citing estimates from industry figures like Jensen Huang, and emphasized that agents can take thousands of actions per second, requiring faster automated responses to security threats. In interviews with CRN and Schwab Network, McClain addressed the growing adoption of AI agents in enterprises and the corresponding security challenges. He described a "foot on the gas, foot on the brake" dynamic where organizations pursue AI benefits while managing security concerns, and said security budgets remain robust, with some AI budgets being leveraged to fund secure deployments. He positioned identity as an organizing principle in security that other tools lack, stating that SailPoint provides the identity context needed to correlate threats to specific identities. McClain also highlighted the company's high gross retention rate, comparing identity products to long-term commitments, and noted SailPoint's recent earnings beat amid rising demand for agentic security solutions.

All Mark Mcclain appearances → Schwab Network on YouTube →