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Palo Alto Networks just added another AI company to its growing collection. The cybersecurity titan announced its acquisition of Console, an AI-native platform built around natural-language workflows, on September 1, 2026. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
Console’s technology will be integrated into Palo Alto’s Cortex platform, the company’s flagship security operations suite. The goal: let security teams talk to their tools in plain English instead of wrestling with complex query languages and endless dashboards, while AI agents handle the grunt work of investigating alerts, prioritizing threats, and executing automated fixes.
From dashboards to decisions
Console was built on a straightforward premise. Complex enterprise operations shouldn’t require a PhD-level understanding of every backend system involved. Users communicate what they need in natural language, and intelligent agents figure out how to make it happen across the relevant infrastructure.
Console CEO Andrei Serban noted that the platform had already delivered meaningful operational savings for its user base before the acquisition.
Palo Alto CEO Nikesh Arora framed the deal as a fundamental shift in how security operations should work, moving from humans monitoring screens to autonomous systems generating solutions on their own.
The integration into Cortex means Console’s capabilities will power three core functions: accelerated investigation of security alerts, intelligent work prioritization so analysts focus on what actually matters, and automated remediation that executes at machine speed.
A shopping spree with a strategy
Console isn’t an isolated purchase. It’s the latest in an aggressive 2026 acquisition streak that has seen Palo Alto Networks systematically fill gaps in its AI security capabilities.
The biggest deal by far was CyberArk, acquired for $25 billion to bolster Palo Alto’s identity security offerings. That transaction closed in February 2026. Shortly before that, in January, Palo Alto picked up Chronosphere for roughly $3.35 billion to strengthen its observability capabilities. Additional acquisitions of Koi and Portkey during 2026 targeted specific AI security capabilities.
The timing of the Console announcement coincided with Palo Alto’s fiscal Q4 and full-year 2026 earnings report.
The $20 billion target
All of this acquisition activity ladders up to one number that Palo Alto has been hammering home to Wall Street: $20 billion in Next-Generation Security Annual Recurring Revenue by fiscal year 2030.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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