Palo Alto Networks Acquired 3 Companies in the Past Year. Here’s Why Its Platformization Strategy Could Pay Off Big.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/03/21/palo-alto-networks-acquired-3-companies-in-the-pas/
Publish Date: 2026-03-21 10:58:00
Source Domain: www.fool.com
There’s an old saying in business: You can either buy or build.
Each strategy offers pros and cons, but buying what you need can be faster and potentially less costly with the right acquisition and execution.
In the crowded cybersecurity space, Palo Alto Networks (PANW 4.05%) is a builder, but it has also been on an aggressive buying spree over the last year.
Today, we’ll look at three specific acquisitions and how they’ll be integrated into Palo Alto Networks.
Source image: Getty Images.
Why the acquisition strategy could pay off
This isn’t a surprise, but Palo Alto Networks’ acquisitions over the last year have had an artificial intelligence (AI) flair.
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$133B
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9.9M
Gross Margin
73.50%
1. Protect AI
Protect AI launched in 2022, and promoted itself as providing the “broadest and most comprehensive AI security solution,” designed to offer protection throughout the life cycle of generative AI applications and machine learning models.
It was a private company before Palo Alto Networks acquired it in July 2025, so there wasn’t much publicly available financial information about it. However, what can still be valuable in such cases is to listen to what management says about how the buyer expects an acquisition to add value to its operations.
“The promise of AI is immense, but so are the security risks,” said Anand Oswal, now Palo Alto’s executive vice president of network security, in the July 22 press release announcing the completion of the acquisition. “Our customers are moving quickly to adopt AI and are asking for a partner who can secure their entire AI ecosystem at scale. Protect AI’s capabilities are a powerful complement to our innovative Prisma AIRS platform, and scales our ability to provide both depth and breadth in AI security to deliver protection across the entire AI lifecycle.”
2. Chronosphere
Chronosphere…
