Palo Alto completes acquisition of Portkey

Palo Alto Networks has completed its acquisition of AI gateway company Portkey.

The company arranged to acquire Portkey in May as part of efforts to establish a mission-critical control plane for autonomous AI agents in the enterprise.

Palo Alto now plans to establish Portkey as the core AI gateway for AI security platform Prisma ARIS, and in doing so develop a solution that natively integrates AI runtime security, agentic identity security and AI observability into a single platform.

Palo Alto Chief Product and Technology Officer Lee Klarich said as organisations start to develop and adopt autonomous AI agents, they risk introducing new vulnerabilities and unchecked costs. An AI gateway is designed to act as the central nervous system for all AI traffic, ensuring organisations can monitor, orchestrate and govern agent interactions, he said.

“AI is evolving so rapidly that organisations often feel forced to choose between two failing strategies: scrambling to integrate a patchwork of ‘point products’ to stay current, or falling behind while waiting for legacy platforms to catch up,” Klarich said. “We’re breaking that cycle. Palo Alto Networks is delivering a platform that stays on the cutting edge through a deliberate combination of organic innovation and strategic acquisitions.

“By making Portkey a critical component of the comprehensive Prisma AIRS platform, we do the heavy lifting of integration so our customers don’t have to, enabling them to adopt the latest AI capabilities with speed and security.”

Portkey CEO and co-founder Rohit Agarwal said the company jointed Palo Alto Networks to bridge the trust gap that is inhibiting AI from reaching its potential.

“Our mission is to help enterprises move fearlessly,” he said. “By combining our gateway with Palo Alto Networks’ AI security platform, we are helping organisations scale from experimental pilots to core business operations without compromising on safety or reliability.”

Image credit: iStock.com/NicoElNino