Palo Alto Networks, Inc.

Is Palo Alto Networks publicly traded?
Yes. It trades on NASDAQ under ticker PANW since July 2012. In 2026 it announced plans for a secondary listing on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange under ticker CYBR.

Who owns Palo Alto Networks?
Public shareholders, mainly institutional investors like Vanguard and BlackRock. Founder Nir Zuk remains CTO and a significant shareholder, and CEO Nikesh Arora has led since 2018. No controlling shareholder exists.

How much revenue does Palo Alto Networks make?
Approximately $11.5 billion in fiscal 2026, up from $9.22 billion in fiscal 2025, including CyberArk's contribution from February 2026 onward.

What companies has Palo Alto Networks acquired?
Major deals include CyberArk (~$25 billion, 2026), Chronosphere (~$3.35 billion, 2025), Expanse ($1.35 billion, 2020), IBM's QRadar SaaS assets (2024), plus Twistlock, Demisto, Zingbox, Bridgecrew, Talon, and dozens of others.

What does Palo Alto Networks sell?
Four platforms: Strata for network security, Prisma for cloud security, Cortex for security operations, and CyberArk for identity security, plus Unit 42 threat research and response services.

Why did Palo Alto Networks buy CyberArk?
To add identity security as its fourth platform, arguing that securing human, machine, and AI-agent identities is becoming the central problem of enterprise security. The ~$25 billion deal closed February 11, 2026.

How many employees does Palo Alto Networks have?
Approximately 19,000 globally including CyberArk's roughly 3,000, with major engineering hubs in California, Israel, and India.

Nir Zuk founded the company in 2005 after building firewall technology at Check Point, where he was among the earliest engineers, and at NetScreen, which Juniper acquired. His founding insight was that firewalls had lost visibility: applications and threats hid inside allowed traffic, and port-based rules could not see them.

The company's first next-generation firewall shipped in 2007 and introduced application-aware traffic control to the enterprise. Sales grew rapidly at the expense of Check Point, Cisco, and Juniper, and the July 2012 IPO established it as the new leader in network security.

Under CEO Mark McLaughlin the company expanded into endpoint protection (TrapX, later Cortex XDR's ancestor), cloud security, and threat intelligence through its Unit 42 research group. When Nikesh Arora arrived from Google in 2018, he accelerated consolidation: the market had fragmented into hundreds of vendors, and Palo Alto Networks would sell platforms.

The acquisition record since is the longest in security history. Notable deals include Demisto (SOAR), Twistlock and PureSec (cloud security), Zingbox (IoT), Expanse for $1.35 billion (attack surface management), Bridgecrew, Cider Security, and Talon. The company organized everything into three platforms: Strata (network), Prisma (cloud), and Cortex (SecOps).

The mega-deal era began in 2024. Palo Alto Networks acquired IBM's QRadar SaaS business, migrated its customers onto XSIAM, and in late 2025 announced the $3.35 billion acquisition of observability vendor Chronosphere. In July 2025 it agreed to buy identity security leader CyberArk for approximately $25 billion in cash and stock, closing February 11, 2026, in one of the largest cybersecurity acquisitions ever completed.

Fiscal 2025 ended July 31, 2025, with revenue of $9.22 billion, up 15 percent, NGS ARR of $5.58 billion up 32 percent, and remaining performance obligations of $15.8 billion. Fiscal 2026 added CyberArk and Chronosphere revenue, lifting the total to roughly $11.5 billion, and the company announced a planned Tel Aviv Stock Exchange secondary listing under ticker CYBR.

Palo Alto Networks has held a leader position in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for network firewalls for more than a decade and leaders' positions in analyst evaluations of SASE, XDR, and cloud workload protection. It appears on the Fortune Future 50 and is a Nasdaq-100 constituent, and its Unit 42 research is among the most cited commercial threat intelligence in the industry.

Patent litigation produced the company's largest legal loss. Centripetal Networks won a verdict against Palo Alto Networks that grew with interest toward $190 million before appeals, part of a long-running dispute over firewall patents. The company has generally been on both sides of security industry patent fights.

Antitrust scrutiny attaches to its scale. Each mega-acquisition draws regulatory review in the US, EU, and UK, though all have ultimately cleared, including CyberArk. Critics and some customers argue that platformization amounts to bundling that exploits buyer fatigue and reduces competition, an argument the company contests with its security-outcomes case.

CEO compensation has drawn periodic public attention: Nikesh Arora's 2018 hire package exceeding $125 million and subsequent large equity grants have been debated in governance coverage, though shareholders have consistently approved the arrangements.

The company avoided the catastrophic self-inflicted incidents that have hit peers, though as a security vendor it operates under permanent scrutiny of its own vulnerability handling and has patched critical firewall vulnerabilities under pressure, including zero-days exploited in the wild in 2024.