Rob Salvagno, chief corporate development officer and head at S Ventures, is one of the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in our 2026 Powerlist.
Rob Salvagno brought deep corporate venturing experience with him when he joined cybersecurity software company SentinelOne as senior vice‑president of corporate development and ventures in September 2021. He arrived with a clear mandate following over two decades at Cisco — including leading Cisco Investments — and a brief period at KKR: to build something more ambitious than a conventional corporate VC arm. SentinelOne, a company defined by autonomous cybersecurity and AI‑first engineering, offered fertile ground.
The result was S Ventures, a $100m fund designed not simply to invest, but to shape a new ecosystem of disruptive security software developers. Over the past year, Salvagno has shifted S Ventures from a traditional strategic investor into what is effectively a platform‑extension engine. Capital is only the starting point; the real objective is to expand the reach of SentinelOne’s technology and accelerate innovation around its core platform.
“As we look ahead to the next decade and beyond, we see the potential for AI and data to be applied to many challenges – this drives the need to build an entirely new ecosystem of companies,” Salvagno wrote in a blog post. “With a significant part of SentinelOne’s success a result of our partner‑first approach, we believe we can take this one step further to innovate beyond our own four walls.”
Founded in 2013, SentinelOne provides a cloud‑based autonomous cybersecurity platform that integrates multiple security functions into a single system. S Ventures is stage‑agnostic, typically investing between $1m and $5m per deal, and targets products that can integrate into the company’s Singularity Marketplace. Portfolio companies gain distribution, technical support and access to SentinelOne’s customer base — a meaningful advantage in a crowded security market.
S Ventures’ investments so far this year include XBow’s series C, Qodo’s $70m series B, cloud backup and data‑infrastructure provider Eon.io, Replit’s $400m round and Echo’s $35m series A. The fund now manages at least 30 portfolio companies.
With rising internal talent such as newly promoted vice‑president David Kellenberger, Salvagno is building more than a venture arm — he is constructing a strategic extension of SentinelOne itself.
The GCV Powerlist represents the 100 individuals spearheading the future of the corporate venturing industry.
These individuals excel in terms of their venturing approach and structure, number and quality of portfolio companies and in their contributions to the corporate venturing profession.
Here’s a snapshot of their recent deals:
