Palo Alto Networks acquires Chronosphere for $3.3B, boosts AI security
Serge Bulaev
Palo Alto Networks has bought Chronosphere for about $3.3 billion to make its AI security even stronger. Chronosphere helps by quickly sorting and protecting huge amounts of cloud data, which is important for keeping modern AI safe. Palo Alto will add Chronosphere's tech to its Cortex platform, helping security teams find and fix problems fast. The new system also saves money by cutting down the amount of data stored and making sure private details stay safe. This big move is expected to change how other security companies like Datadog and Splunk compete in the market.
Cybersecurity leader Palo Alto Networks acquires Chronosphere, integrating the observability startup into its Cortex platform. This strategic acquisition, valued at an estimated $3.3 billion, unifies security and observability to provide real-time insight into the massive data workloads of the AI era.
Regulatory filings confirm the merger, with Chronosphere now operating as a wholly owned subsidiary. While official financial terms were not disclosed, industry sources reported the deal's value. Executives frame the acquisition as a catalyst for autonomous security operations, a strategy focused on managing AI-era data volumes (Investing.com).
How Chronosphere Enhances the Cortex Platform
The integration embeds Chronosphere's telemetry pipeline into Cortex, enabling the platform to ingest, filter, and analyze data from diverse cloud and on-premise sources with high efficiency. This enhancement allows security teams to gain trusted, real-time context across their entire infrastructure, from models and prompts to users.
Chronosphere's technology ingests telemetry from sources like Kubernetes clusters, cloud services, and APIs, then routes this data to analytics engines. Palo Alto Networks will embed these capabilities into Cortex XSIAM and the new Cortex AgentiX, empowering security teams to deploy AI agents that automatically detect and remediate threats. A joint statement emphasizes that effective security begins with trusted context across all layers (PRNewswire release).
The Chronosphere Telemetry Pipeline delivers significant performance and efficiency gains:
- Cuts ingested data volumes by 30% or more
- Requires up to 20× less infrastructure than legacy pipelines
- Masks sensitive fields in-flight to meet compliance mandates like GDPR and CCPA
By embedding this pipeline, Palo Alto Networks aims to reduce the "data tax" that strains security budgets. For added flexibility, customers can purchase the pipeline as a standalone service for heterogeneous environments.
Chronosphere founder Martin Mao will join Palo Alto Networks as SVP and General Manager of Observability, ensuring product continuity. CEO Nikesh Arora stated the acquisition "accelerates our vision to be the indispensable platform for securing and operating the cloud and AI."
This move is expected to increase competitive pressure on pure-play observability vendors like Datadog, New Relic, and Splunk. As legacy tools struggle with the scale of cloud-native environments, the combined Palo Alto-Chronosphere offering provides a distinct efficiency advantage, and the market will be watching to see if promised data reductions translate into faster threat detection.