Comparison
QNSP vs SandboxAQ AQtive Guard
QNSP and AQtive Guard sit at different layers of the post-quantum migration story — QNSP is the platform you run PQC on, AQtive Guard is the layer that tells you what crypto you have today and helps orchestrate the move. The two products overlap on discovery and crypto-posture; they diverge sharply on whether the product actually operates the resulting keys, secrets, storage, and audit chain. Every row below is sourced from aqtiveguard.com, sandboxaq.com, or named press.
SandboxAQ is a serious player — Alphabet pedigree, $5.75B valuation, U.S. Department of War cryptography contract, AI-SPM Runtime Guardrails shipping today. The honest framing is that QNSP and AQtive Guard are adjacent products that customers can run together, not direct overlapping replacements for most of the stack. Where they DO overlap (crypto discovery and orchestration), the trade-offs are spelled out below.
Side by side
Fourteen categories that matter to a PQC platform buyer
| Category | QNSP | SandboxAQ AQtive Guard |
|---|---|---|
| Product scope | Full PQC platform: KMS (90 algorithms), vault (PQC-encrypted secrets), SSE-X (encrypted object storage), encrypted vector search, tamper-evident audit chain, enclave AI orchestration, 11 cloud-vendor crypto-posture connectors, multi-region failover, isolated tenancy. 18 production microservices. | AQtive Guard is a cryptographic discovery / posture / orchestration platform — explicitly NOT a KMS or vault. Per aqtiveguard.com: 'discovers and evaluates existing cryptographic assets but does not generate, create, or produce new keys or certificates.' Four modules: Discover, Assess, Protect, Govern. The crypto operations run on customer-owned infrastructure. |
| PQC algorithm coverage | 90 algorithms across 14 PQC families (27 KEMs + 63 signatures). ML-KEM, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA, FN-DSA / Falcon, HQC, BIKE, Classic McEliece, FrodoKEM, NTRU, NTRU-Prime, MAYO, CROSS, UOV, SNOVA. Independently reproducible from github.com/cuilabs/qnsp-public. | Marketing references 'NIST PQC Standards' generically; no specific algorithm enumeration on the public AQtive Guard product pages. AQtive Guard's role is to migrate customer-owned crypto TO post-quantum, not to operate it. |
| AI security (AI-SPM, runtime guardrails) | AI Workloads + AI Intelligence cover prompt-injection detection, per-model bias monitoring, signed model registry with provenance, cost optimization, governance policies, automated remediation. AI workloads run in confidential enclaves with PQC attestation. | AI-SPM is now SandboxAQ's headline 2026 narrative. Runtime Guardrails (March 2026) enforce inbound prompt + outbound response policies; MCP risk analysis added pre-RSAC 2026. Stronger AI-runtime story than QNSP's at this date. Source: securityboulevard.com 2026-03 + prnewswire.com. |
| Multi-cloud crypto-posture coverage | 11 cloud-vendor connectors: AWS, Azure, GCP, Alibaba, Akamai, Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, Fastly, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, HashiCorp Vault. Unified CycloneDX CBOM + NIST PQC readiness scoring + automated migration plans across the entire estate. | 3 cloud connectors confirmed on public product pages: AWS, Azure, GCP (agentless IAM-role scanning). Alibaba, Akamai, Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, Fastly, IBM, Oracle, HashiCorp Vault not enumerated on aqtiveguard.com/platform. |
| Discovery scope | Crypto-inventory service surfaces keys, certificates, TLS endpoints, PKI assets, HSM-held material, and PQC readiness scoring across connected estates. CycloneDX CBOM export for compliance evidence. | Six scanning surfaces (apps / network / endpoint / cloud / browser / memory) on the Discover module. This is a more mature, broader discovery story than QNSP's at this date — a legitimate AQtive Guard strength. |
| KMS / vault / encrypted storage | Native KMS (FIPS 140-3 path, BYOH across 8 HSM vendors), PQC-encrypted vault with versioning + leakage detection, SSE-X server-side encryption with ML-KEM envelope keys, encrypted vector search. | None. AQtive Guard sits ABOVE customer-owned KMS, vault, and storage — it tells you what's there and helps migrate, but does not provide a KMS, vault, or encrypted storage product. |
| Tamper-evident audit chain | 59 crypto-critical event types across 12 source services flow into a hash-chained Merkle ledger. ML-DSA-65-signed events, SHA3-256/512 checkpoints, receipt-replay verification, real-time WebSocket streaming for SIEM. | AQtive Guard generates compliance evidence packs but does not advertise a PQC-signed hash-chained audit ledger as a tenant-facing primitive. The orchestration runs on top of customer audit infrastructure. |
| Dual-provider cross-verification | On Maximum and Government policy tiers, every crypto operation is signed by liboqs (native C) and verified by noble (pure JS). 18-algorithm overlap. Provider attestation logged on every operation. | Sandwich (their open-source library, AGPL 3.0) is a multi-backend crypto API wrapping OpenSSL/BoringSSL/liboqs. Runtime dual-provider verification of customer operations is not a documented AQtive Guard capability. |
| Pricing model | Transparent self-serve ladder: $0 free forever (10 GB + 50K API calls), $99 dev-starter, $450 dev-pro, $1,499 business-team, up to $5,999 business-elite, plus enterprise tiers. No credit card for free tier. | Enterprise sales only. No public pricing, no free tier, no self-serve onboarding. Site CTAs route to a sales call. Source: aqtiveguard.com, sandboxaq.com. |
| Compliance frameworks reported | Seven frameworks mapped at the control level: SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS v4.0.1, GDPR, PDPA (Singapore), MAS TRM. Real-time evaluation from live service-health probes. | AQtive Guard generates compliance evidence for NIST, OWASP, EU AI Act, NIST PQC standards. SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS, PDPA, MAS TRM not enumerated on public product pages. Source: aqtiveguard.com. |
| APAC regulatory home | Singapore-HQ. PDPA + MAS TRM mapped natively. Built for MAS-regulated FSI, GIC/Temasek-owned entities, APAC critical infrastructure from day one. | HQ: 780 High Street, Palo Alto, California. No Singapore / APAC office publicly disclosed. Customers include SoftBank Mobile (Japan) and SoftBank Corp Advanced Research Group, but no MAS-TRM / PDPA mapping in product documentation. |
| Named customer references | Pre-launch + early-pilot phase as of May 2026. Public benchmarks + open SDK mirror at github.com/cuilabs/qnsp-public. | Significant named customer book: U.S. Department of War (5-year cryptography modernization contract, Dec 2025), U.S. Air Force, HHS, DISA QRC PKI program, Vodafone, SoftBank Mobile, Informatica, Cloudera, Mount Sinai, 'several top global banks.' This is a real SandboxAQ strength. Sources: thequantuminsider.com 2025-12-11, executivebiz.com, iot-now.com, prnewswire.com. |
| Funding + scale | Singapore-based startup, public benchmarks + transparent SDK mirror. Built in 2025 with the explicit goal of being the auditable PQC platform. | ~$950M+ raised across multiple rounds; $5.75B post-money valuation after Series E (April 2025, $450M+); $95M secondary July 2025. Alphabet spin-out. Sources: tsginvest.com, pitchbook.com. (Note: IPO timing is third-party-speculated as 3–5 years out — we don't publish a specific IPO date claim.) |
| Open source | Full public SDK + integration mirror at github.com/cuilabs/qnsp-public. SDKs in 4 languages on public registries (npm, PyPI, pkg.go.dev, crates.io) under permissive licensing. | Sandwich (github.com/sandbox-quantum/sandwich): multi-language unified crypto API wrapping OpenSSL/BoringSSL/liboqs (C/C++, Rust, Python, Go). Licensed AGPL 3.0 — copyleft, significant for enterprise consumption requiring source-distribution. |
When to pick which
Honest decision guide
Pick SandboxAQ if…
- Your primary need is cryptographic discovery + migration orchestration across an already-operating crypto estate, and you want to keep operating your own KMS, vault, and storage.
- You're a U.S. federal / defense buyer where the DoW contract reference and Alphabet pedigree carry procurement weight.
- AI-SPM (runtime LLM-prompt policy + MCP risk) is on your shortlist alongside PQC, and you want one vendor for both today.
Pick QNSP if…
- You want a single platform that operates PQC KMS, vault, encrypted storage, encrypted search, audit chain, and enclave AI — not a discovery layer on top of separate products.
- You operate in MAS-regulated FSI or under PDPA-binding workloads and want a vendor with those frameworks mapped at the control level natively.
- You want transparent self-serve pricing, a $0 free tier, and the ability to evaluate without a sales call.
- Broader PQC algorithm coverage (90 across 14 families, including code-based McEliece / hash-based SLH-DSA fallbacks) is required by your regulator.
Run them side-by-side if…
- AQtive Guard's six-surface discovery + AI-SPM is feeding your roadmap, AND QNSP is the destination platform for the keys/secrets/storage it discovers needs migration.
- You want SandboxAQ's runtime LLM-policy enforcement at the gateway and QNSP's PQC platform underneath the data plane.
Verify the QNSP claims
Every claim on this page is independently reproducible
QNSP's algorithm registry, policy tiers, cross-verification logic, audit-event types, and tier limits are all published at github.com/cuilabs/qnsp-public. The SandboxAQ claims link to aqtiveguard.com, sandboxaq.com, or named press releases (PRNewswire, Security Boulevard, TheQuantumInsider, ExecutiveBiz). If anything is wrong or outdated, email qnsp-legal@cuilabs.io — we'll re-verify and correct.