Palo Alto Networks has paid roughly $500 million for AI-native IT service management startup Console, TechCrunch reported this month, giving the cybersecurity giant a purpose-built agentic-automation stack for its Cortex XSIAM security operations platform and tightening the arms race with SentinelOne, CrowdStrike and startup Serval over agent-run SOCs.
$500 Million For A Two-Year-Old Startup
The Santa Clara-based firm confirmed the deal on September 1 with a press release framed around "agentifying" security operations. Palo Alto did not disclose the price, but three people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch on September 2 that the cash-and-stock package landed at about $500 million — a roughly 20x mark-up on the $22 million Series A that DST Global and Thrive Capital led just months earlier. Console was founded in 2024 by Andrei and Georgi Serban, and had raised only $28 million total before selling.
What Console Brings To Cortex XSIAM
Console's platform uses natural-language playbooks to autonomously investigate signals, prioritise work and remediate IT and security issues across Slack, Okta, Jamf, Jira and other enterprise systems. Palo Alto plans to fold that agent-orchestration layer into Cortex XSIAM — its unified SIEM/XDR/SOAR/ASM stack — and into Prisma Access, so that customers can express operational goals in English and let the platform pick actions across identity, endpoint and cloud. "Security operations can no longer be about managing dashboards and queuing tickets," CEO Nikesh Arora said in the release. "This is the shift to software-as-an-agent."
Follow-On To A Wave Of Agentic Security M&A
The Console buy caps a busy summer of consolidation in agentic security. Anthropic's Cortex-family tie-ins, CrowdStrike's May purchase of Adaptive Shield, and Cisco's continued Splunk integration have all pointed at the same thesis: AI agents can compress the mean-time-to-resolve on alerts if they can also touch identity, endpoint and productivity systems. Startup coverage this week also highlighted the momentum, from Comp AI's $34M Series A for agentic compliance to Eve Security's $7.5M seed for AI agent runtime and Mind's $72M Series B for AI-native DLP.
Where It Leaves Serval — And Palo Alto's Multiple
Industry watchers told TechCrunch the deal leaves Sequoia-backed Serval as the de facto standalone leader in AI IT service automation. For Palo Alto, the Console purchase adds to a run of tuck-in agentic-AI acquisitions — including Protect AI and IBM QRadar SaaS assets — that CFO Dipak Golechha has said will help defend Cortex XSIAM's premium multiple against SentinelOne's Purple AI and Google's Sec-Palm push. Nasdaq: PANW opened 2.4% higher on the day the reported price was published.
Reporting based on coverage from TechCrunch, PR Newswire and the Palo Alto Networks investor release.