Tenable NASDAQ: TENB executives highlighted a strong start to fiscal 2026 and emphasized what they described as a rapidly changing cybersecurity landscape shaped by frontier AI models that can discover vulnerabilities at “machine speed.” On the company’s first quarter 2026 earnings call, management said it exceeded guidance across key metrics, raised its full-year outlook, and pointed to growing customer demand for its Tenable One exposure management platform and newly announced agentic AI capabilities.
Q1 results beat guidance as Tenable One gains traction
Co-CEO Steve Vintz said Tenable delivered 10% year-over-year revenue growth in the quarter and a 24% operating margin, while continuing to see increasing contribution from Tenable One. Vintz said Tenable One accounted for 41% of new business in Q1, an 8-point increase from the year-ago quarter.
CFO Matt Brown reported revenue of $262.1 million, up 9.6% year over year. Brown said results were supported by “a solid foundation of renewal business and an increase in new business growth,” with professional services also contributing upside. Recurring revenue was 96% of the total.
Operationally, Tenable added 406 new enterprise customers, up 12.5% compared with Q1 of the prior year, and added 43 net new six-figure customers. Net dollar expansion rate was 105%.
Profitability improved as well. Brown reported non-GAAP gross margin of 82.2%, up from 81.9% a year earlier, and non-GAAP operating income of $61.9 million, or 23.6% of revenue, up 27.1% from the prior-year quarter. Non-GAAP EPS was $0.47, up from $0.36, which Brown attributed to higher profitability and lower diluted shares outstanding.
AI-driven vulnerability discovery becomes a central customer topic
Management devoted much of the call to what it sees as the implications of frontier AI for security teams. Vintz said recent announcements, including “Anthropic Mythic,” demonstrate that AI can discover software vulnerabilities “at scale and speed we have not seen before.” He said Tenable has seen a “significant increase in inbound inquiries” in recent weeks as customers seek guidance.
Vintz outlined Tenable’s view that frontier AI models will increase both the discovery of previously unknown vulnerabilities and the pace of changes in software, contributing to “a proliferation of new vulnerabilities and attack paths” that could overload defenders. He distinguished between source-code-level vulnerability discovery and what he said Tenable focuses on: understanding a customer’s digital footprint and prioritizing exposures in the real-world environment, including “over privileged access, misconfigurations, shadow AI, and the real-world impact of vulnerabilities.”
Co-CEO Mark Thurmond said customer urgency has risen “not just at the practitioner level, but across the C-suite and the board.” He said initiatives such as OpenAI’s TAC program and Anthropic Mythic have triggered a surge of inbound strategic conversations, with customers concerned about a major increase in vulnerability volume and the inability of current remediation processes to scale. Thurmond also cited a JPMorgan Chase blog highlighting that AI is compressing the time from vulnerability discovery to exploitation, while patch cycles often exceed organizations’ capacity.
Hexa AI and OT Discovery positioned as moves toward “system of action”
Vintz described Tenable Hexa AI, announced in Q1, as an “agentic engine” intended to translate prioritized exposure insights into coordinated remediation actions. He said Hexa is designed to operate as an orchestration layer across the security ecosystem, automating triage and executing multi-step remediation workflows. In his framing, Tenable One functions as a “system of record for risk management,” while Hexa is designed as a “system of action for proactive risk reduction.”
In Q&A, Vintz said Hexa is expected to be generally available in the second quarter. He also said Tenable introduced new pricing and packaging with a foundational package and an advanced package, with Hexa available “full form” in the advanced model, including “greater tokenized access.”
Tenable also recently announced OT Discovery, which Vintz said is integrated directly into Tenable One to reduce deployment friction for visibility into cyber-physical systems. He said OT environments are becoming more important as the number of OT devices expands with AI data centers and build-outs.
Deal commentary and go-to-market changes
Thurmond said the company’s largest new Tenable One logo win of the quarter was a seven-figure transaction with a major financial institution in the Middle East, where Tenable displaced an incumbent competitor in favor of a more unified approach to exposure management. In response to a question from TD Cowen, Thurmond said Tenable replaced “one major player” that had been the incumbent for multiple years.
Thurmond also cited a new six-figure Tenable One deal tied to securing a company’s use of AI, and a six-figure OT deal with a public sector organization responsible for critical infrastructure. He said these wins reflect customers moving away from siloed tools and toward platforms that provide unified visibility, contextual prioritization, and more automated action.
Separately, Thurmond said Tenable introduced a new flexible pricing and packaging model, maintaining pricing per asset but standardizing the price across asset types to create more predictable spend and reduce procurement friction as customers scale exposure management across their attack surface. Tenable described itself as “a 100% channel-driven company,” and Thurmond said the model has been well received by channel partners and customers.
On sales capacity, Thurmond said Tenable is “laser-focused on growth” and highlighted the appointment of new CRO Dino DiMarino following the retirement of Dave Feringa. He said the company added incremental capacity entering 2026 and is evaluating adding sales capacity in faster-growing regions, while also focusing on improving productivity per seller through AI tools. Brown added that Tenable is increasing sales and quota capacity while reducing costs by rotating dollars from non-quota-carrying areas, enabled by AI-driven efficiencies.
Guidance raised; buybacks accelerated amid record free cash flow
Brown said Tenable raised its full-year outlook after exceeding the high end of guided ranges in Q1. For Q2, Tenable guided revenue of $263 million to $266 million. For full-year 2026, it raised revenue guidance to $1.068 billion to $1.078 billion.
Profit guidance was also lifted. Tenable guided Q2 non-GAAP operating income of $61 million to $64 million and raised full-year non-GAAP operating income guidance to $252 million to $262 million. For earnings, it guided Q2 non-GAAP EPS of $0.46 to $0.48 and raised full-year non-GAAP EPS guidance to $1.90 to $1.98.
Brown also highlighted balance sheet and cash flow strength. Cash and short-term investments totaled $360.3 million, and unlevered free cash flow was $88.6 million, an all-time record representing 33.8% of revenue. Tenable repurchased 6.1 million shares for $130 million in Q1 and had $207.6 million remaining under its authorization. Brown said the company believes its stock is trading below “true value” and views repurchases as an effective use of capital, while maintaining capacity for opportunistic M&A.
Management repeatedly returned to the theme that AI-driven vulnerability discovery increases the importance of exposure management. Vintz told analysts that “AI is a massive opportunity for Tenable,” describing frontier model providers as partners rather than substitutes. Thurmond similarly called the current moment a “force multiplier” for the exposure management category and said Tenable is partnering with both Anthropic and OpenAI, including building Claude into Hexa.
Tenable said it will provide additional context on AI, its roadmap, and midterm financial expectations at an Investor Day on May 21 in Boston, held in conjunction with its Exposure 2026 industry conference.
About Tenable NASDAQ: TENB
Tenable Holdings, Inc is a global cybersecurity company specializing in vulnerability management and continuous threat exposure assessment. Headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, Tenable was founded in 2002 by Ron Gula and Jack Huffard to address the growing need for proactive network security solutions. Over the years, the company has evolved from a pioneer in open-source vulnerability scanning to a leading provider of comprehensive security platforms that help organizations identify, investigate and prioritize cyber risks across on-premises, cloud and operational technology environments.
At the core of Tenable's product suite is Nessus, one of the industry's most widely adopted vulnerability scanners.
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