Palo Alto Networks closed out its fiscal year on September 1 with a beat on both lines and another acquisition, this time of a two-year-old AI agent startup called Console. The deal, reported at $500 million in cash and stock, is the company's seventh purchase of 2026 and a sign of how aggressively the largest security vendors are buying their way into agentic AI.
The quarter
Fiscal fourth-quarter revenue came in at $3.41 billion, up 34% from $2.54 billion a year earlier and ahead of the $3.35 billion analysts expected. Adjusted earnings were $1.02 per share versus a 98-cent estimate. The company attributed demand to customers scrambling to secure AI deployments. For fiscal 2027, Palo Alto guided to revenue of $14.10 billion to $14.20 billion, above the roughly $13.79 billion the Street had penciled in.
What Console does
Console was founded in 2024 by Andrei Serban and builds AI agents that handle routine IT help-desk work: password resets, granting access to apps like Figma and Miro, and everyday troubleshooting. It had raised $29 million, including a $6.2 million seed led by Thrive Capital and a $23 million Series A co-led by DST Global and Thrive, and was valued at about $157 million before the deal. One early angel investor was Palo Alto CEO Nikesh Arora himself.
Palo Alto plans to fold Console into its Cortex platform so agents can resolve alerts, issues and requests "at machine speed," extending Cortex from security operations into broader IT workflows.
A buying spree
Console joins a 2026 shopping list that includes Chronosphere for $3.35 billion and Koi for $400 million, on top of the earlier CyberArk deal. It also lands in a month when AI dealmaking has dominated headlines, with Google having closed its $32 billion Wiz acquisition and Snowflake and Dell both jumping on AI-driven results.
Source: CNBC, TechCrunch
Photo: CNBC (source)
