What happened
G2 published its Fall 2026 Market Reports on August 25, covering 28,042 total reports with 702 newly added this quarter alone. The release introduced 17 new report-ready categories, among them Cloud GTM Platforms, AI SDK and AI AppSec Assistants, Zero Trust Platforms, Non-Human Identity Management, and Large Language Models as a standalone category for the first time. Agentic AI added 74 new listed products this quarter and AI Agents added 70, the fastest-growing segments on the entire platform by product count. G2 requires at least six products with more than 10 reviews each, and 150 total reviews combined, before a category becomes eligible for a full Grid Report, which means these new categories are still wide open relative to saturated categories like CRM or project management, where only 2% of vendors earn a Leader badge at all despite hundreds of listed competitors fighting for the same reviews.
Why new software categories matter now
MagnetizeX builds founder visibility systems for B2B firms.
A brand-new G2 category is a rare thing: a review page where your competitor set is still small, your review count can actually move the ranking meaningfully, and buyers researching that exact term have almost nowhere else structured to look for a comparison. Once a category matures, as CRM and marketing automation have over a decade, the review count required to compete becomes a multi-year investment most startups can't front-load. Founders building anything adjacent to Cloud GTM Platforms, agentic AI, or AI AppSec tooling have a narrow window, likely a single fiscal quarter, where a real review push can establish lasting category position before ten well-funded competitors do exactly the same thing.
- Check whether your product now qualifies for a new category.Search G2's list of newly added categories against your own positioning and feature set. If Cloud GTM Platforms, AI SDK and AppSec Assistants, or Non-Human Identity Management describes what you sell, claim your listing this quarter, not next.
- Push for customer reviews now, while the bar is six competitors.New categories need only six products with 10-plus reviews to generate a Grid Report. A focused push to your last 15 closed-won customers can be the difference between appearing on the first report or missing it entirely for two full quarters.
- Rewrite your category language to match G2's exact naming.If G2 has named a category close to your product, adopt that exact term in your own marketing copy immediately. Buyers searching that phrase on G2 are actively comparison-shopping, and matched language shows up in both G2 search and your own organic SEO.
By the numbers: Just 2% of the software products and providers listed on G2 receive a Leader badge in any given cycle, a scarcity that makes early entry into a newly created, less crowded category disproportionately valuable for smaller vendors.
What to do this week
Check G2's newly added category list against your own product description, and if one fits, email your last 10 closed-won customers this week asking for a review specifically on that category page. Six qualifying products with 10-plus reviews each is the entire bar for a category's first Grid Report to publish.