Cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks believes successful cyber-defense must fuse “platformization” and AI tools to enable machine-speed remediation as agentic AI proliferates.

“AI is a long-term tailwind for cybersecurity,” Chair and Chief Executive Nikesh Arora said on the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call on Sept. 1.

“While these models are becoming increasingly proficient at uncovering vulnerabilities, detection is merely the opening act,” he said. “Truly validating, interpreting context and resolving these issues requires broad cybersecurity platforms working alongside frontier AI.”

Machine-speed defense requires a unified data structure in which “AI processes every signal, collapsing response times from days to just minutes,” Arora said.

“Platformization is the only viable strategy for real-time defense, fighting AI with AI.”

Palo Alto Networks completed a record 220 platformizations — shifting from multiple single-purpose tools to a single digital platform that handles multiple functions — in Q4, which ended July 31.

AI evolution

Three inflection points in the evolution of AI in the past six months have redefined how AI interacts with enterprise and cybersecurity, Arora said:

1. The growth of OpenClaw, a self-hosted AI model that runs on a user’s hardware and connects to messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Slack to send emails, execute commands, control browsers and manage calendars. OpenClaw has catalyzed the transition from standard large language models requiring human prompting to autonomous agentic action, Arora said.
2. The release of Anthropic’s Mythos model. In recent testing, Mythos uploaded a malicious Python package to software repository PyPI that was downloaded and executed on 15 real systems and Anthropic models, including Mythos, breached three organizations, Anthropic reported in July.
3. A market shift in the past three months from a handful of frontier AI models to numerous open-source models, Arora said. “Each new deployment adds more infrastructure to fortify and more sensitive data to protect,” he said.

Palo Alto Networks has expanded its focus from “the chatbot-centric era of generative AI” to addressing the risks created by agentic AI, Arora said.

“In an AI-driven threat environment, there is no longer anywhere to hide,” Arora said. “For our customers, the ‘Mythos Moment’ reframes the security challenge from visibility to velocity.”

Acquisitions

To keep pace with the changing cybersecurity landscape, Palo Alto Networks closed the two largest acquisitions in its history this year:

• Identity security platform CyberArk on Feb. 11 in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $25 billion; and
• Observability platform Chronosphere on Jan. 29 for $3.4 billion.

The company also acquired for undisclosed amounts:

• AI-native platform Console on Sept. 1;
• User-focused observability provider Embrace on Aug. 27;
• AI gateway company Portkey on May 29; and
• Endpoint security platform Koi on April 14.

BY THE NUMBERS: Palo Alto Networks reported in Q4:

• Revenue of $3.4 billion, up 34.5% YoY;
• Operating expenses of $2.1 billion, up 56.8% YoY; and
• Net loss of $282 million, down from a net income of $254 million in Q4 2025.

Shares of Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) were down 9.28% from market open to $328.48 as of market close today. The company has a market capitalization of $263.8 billion.

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